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_" These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and unbiased ; and submitted en- 
tirely to the opinion of grave men, well affected to^ the Constitution of their country, and 
of experience on what may most promote or hurt it." 

—Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. 



OUR NATIONAL BANE; 

OK, 

THE DRY-ROT IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 

A TRACT FOR THE TIMES 

TOUCHING CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, 
GEORGE L. PRENTISS. 



I LIBRARY OF COieRESS.i 



I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 



OUR NATIONAL BANE 



OR, 



THE DRY-ROT IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 



A TRACT FOR THE TIMES 



TOUCHING CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, 



BY 



GEORGE L. PRENTISS. 



" These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and unbiased ; and sub- 
mitted entirely to the opinion of grave men, well affected to the Constitution of 
their country, and of experience in what may best promote or hurt it." 

— Burke's Thoughts on the Cause o/ the Present Discontents. 




NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

900 Broadway, cor. 20th Street. 

1877. 




O 



n/ To 



«2>^ 



COPTRIGDT, 1S7T, BY 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COAIPANY. 




EDWARD 0. JENKINS, 

ritlXTEK AND STERBOTYPER, 

20 NORTH WILLIAM ST., N.Y. 



ROBERT RUTTER, 
lilXDER, 
84 BBEKMAN STREET, N.Y, 



The substance of the following tract was 
first read before a clerical circle of this city 
and afterwards picblished i7c The Tribune of 
March loth. At the suggestion and desire 
of friends^ whose judgment on the subject is 
worth a great deal more than mine, it is 
now reprinted — with considerable additions and, 
as I hope, improved also — in the interest of 

Civil Service Reform, 

G. L. p. 
New York, April ^Ih, 1877. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Republican Institutions Liable to Con- 
stant Abuse and Decay i 

II. Origin and Growth of Political Abuses, . 2 

III. Executive Patronage, 4 

IV. The Spoils System, 7 

V. Stages in the Development of the System, 10 

VI. "To THE Victors Belong the Spoils," , 14 
VII. Did Gen. Jackson Inaugurate the Spoils 

System? — Mr. Webster's Testimony, . 16 

Vlll. The System under President Van Buren, . 24 

IX, Congressional Patronage, . . . .27 

X. Position of Gov. Hayes 35 

XI. Machinery of the System 37 

XII. Politics as a Trade, 43 

XIII. Demagogues and the Spoils, . . . .48 

XIV. Demagogues and Repudiation, ... 52 
XV. Spoils and the Ballot-Box, . . . .56 

XVI. Spoils and Party Spirit, 59 

XVII. Public Spirit, 62 

XVIII. Public Life and Stewardship, . . .68 

XIX. Civil Service Reform, 74 

XX. Practical Conditions of Successful Re- 
form, 80 

XXI. Other Conditions of a Successful and Per- 
manent Reform, 92 

XXII. The New Administration :— Is it the Dawn 

of a New Era? .,.*.. 103 



A TRACT FOR THE TIMES 

TOUCHING 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 



I. 



REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS LIABLE TO CONSTANT 
ABUSE AND DECAY. 

Our free institutions partake of the weakness and 
evil tendencies that belong to human nature, and, 
like all things temporal, are exposed to constant 
abuse and decay. This is plainly implied in the 
manifold constitutional and legal checks and penal- 
ties which mark our whole political system. No offi- 
cer of the Government stands so high that the law 
does not warn him to take heed lest he fall. Our 
Presidents, members of Congress, and judges are men 
of like passions with rulers, and legislators, and judges 
in a monarchy or an empire ; and so are all other 
servants of the state. It is an old saying that the 
corruption of the best is the worst — corriiptio optinti 
pessima. No religious error is so terrible as that 
which turns the truth of God into a lie and the 
grace of God into licentiousness. No social vice is so 
debasing as that which pollutes the marriage union ; 
and on the same principle no political evils are so 



2 ORIGIN OF POLITICAL ABUSES. 

virulent and degrading as those which come of the 
prostitution of Hberty. 

This is the lesson which history and philosophy 
teach with equal emphasis. We may boast never so 
loudly of our democratic freedom ; there is one and 
one only way of preserving it unimpaired — namely, by 
conforming in all things to the divine laws of social 
order and well-being. These laws are as immutable 
as that of gravitation ; there is with them no respect 
of persons or of forms of government, and if violated, 
they are, to say the least of it, quite as sure to avenge 
themselves upon republican transgressors as upon 
those of any other name. Civil freedom, then, like 
individual freedom, can be kept from abuse and de- 
cay only by steadfast obedience to the moral laws of 
the world. But, of course, the more truly free a na- 
tion is, so much easier and more natural will it find 
such obedience, just as the wiser and better any man 
is, so much more likely will he be to use his liberty 
aright. To a people, as to an individual, character 
is of unspeakable value as a protection against temp- 
tation and wrong tendencies. And if, in spite of high 
character, grave error is committed, we may fairly 
infer that the evil first wrought by stealthy methods 
and unperceived. 

II. 
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF POLITICAL ABUSES. 

The point just made throws light on the origin 
and growth of political abuses. " In States," remarks 
Burke, "there are often some obscure and almost 
latent causes, things which appear at first view of 
little moment, on which a very great part of their 



WRONG PRINCIPLE AND WRONG PRACTICE. 3 

prosperity or adversity may essentially depend." No- 
where does human ignorance show itself more im- 
pressively. In the best governments it must needs 
be that offenses come ; but nobody can foretell ex- 
actly when, or how, or by whom they will come. 
Omniscience alone could provide for all the endless 
contingencies and caprices of sovereign power, wheth- 
er wielded by a single man or by many millions of 
men. Of one thing, however, we may feel absolutely 
sure : zvherever a wrong principle is admitted and 
acted upon, there an abuse will^ in due time, make 
its appearance. Democracy no more puts a stop to 
the proper effects of human ignorance, folly, and 
selfishness than to the changes of the moon, or the 
ocean tide. Constitutions and laws are designed 
to protect society against these baleful influences ; 
but in the nature of the case the object can be 
only partially secured. For the current of human 
ignorance, folly, and selfishness is always setting 
strongly — and in times of great public excitement 
and peril rushes madly like a raging sea — against the 
appointed barriers and safeguards of social order. 
There has probably never been a moment — even the 
most peaceful — in our history when the fundamental 
law was not more or less violated, both in the letter 
and the spirit. Even Holy Scripture, the great char- 
ter of religious faith and conduct, is but partially 
carried out in practice in the best ordered Christian 
community. 

The genesis of political abuses and corruption, then, 
is usually this: Some wrong principle was inadvertently 
admitted, some point of danger left unguarded, in the 
organic law, or else a vital mistake has been made in 



4 EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE. 

carrying out one or more of its provisions ; both the 
original and the legislative error having been, perhaps, 
the result of a slight, casual majority. For a consid- 
erable period the evil remains latent, or at least at- 
tracts scarcely any notice ; but by and by it begins to 
take shape, to show its real character, and to excite 
the alarm of thoughtful citizens. Yet the law sus- 
tains it ; it proves to be invaluable as an instrument 
of part}' discipline and advantage ; and so the alarm 
about it is decried or laughed at as altogether need- 
less. When at last the eyes of the community are 
fairly opened to the mischief, it is found to be a vast 
political power, intrenched in law and established cus- 
tom, supported by an army of mercenaries, and ready 
to bid defiance alike to public opinion and the public 
conscience. 

III. 

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE. 

Slavery and the slave power will at once occur as 
the most impressive illustration in our political annals. 
Next, and only next to slavery, as a case in point, is 
Executive patronage ; and upon that I shall chiefly 
dwell. In intrusting the power of appointment to 
the President, in conjunction with the Senate, the 
Convention of 1787 were evident!)' actuated by that 
spirit of considerate and watchful patriotism which so 
eminently distinguished them. The probability of 
any very flagrant abuse of the power seems hardly to 
have crossed their minds. And in defending this pro- 
vision of the Constitution The Federalist is equally 
confident. In respect to no subject was the judg- 



DECISION OF 1789. 5 

ment and foresight of that great authority more at 
fault. This was doubtless owing — in part, at least — 
to the circumstance that, in the opinion of The Fed- 
eralist, removal from office also required the concur- 
rent action of the Senate. " The consent of that 
body (says Hamilton, No. jf) would be necessary to 
displace as well as appoint. A change of the Chief 
Magistrate, therefore, would not occasion so violent 
or so general a revolution in the officers of the Gov- 
ernment as might be expected, if he was the sole dis- 
penser of offices. Where a man in any station had 
given satisfactory evidence of his fitness for it, a new 
President would be restrained from attempting a change 
in favor of a person more agreeable to him, by the ap- 
prehension that the discountenance of the Senate 
might frustrate the attempt, and bring some degree 
of discredit upon himself." Had this construction 
prevailed, the country would probably have been 
spared a large portion of the evils which have re- 
sulted from Executive patronage. But, unfortunate- 
ly, the first Congress decided — in the Senate by the 
casting vote of the Vice-President — that the power of 
removal belonged exclusively to the President. The 
argument was that in extreme cases, such, e.g., as the 
insanity or absconding of a public officer, the inter- 
ests of the Government might render it absolutely 
necessary that the power of removal should be exer- 
cised while the Senate was not in session. It was 
contended that, as the Executive (and we must re- 
member that Washington was then President) would 
only use the power in extraordinary exigencies, no 
harm was likely to come of it. Mr. Madison, who 
favored the bill on the ground mentioned, did not 



6 OPINION OF MR. WEBSTER. 

hesitate to declare that, if a President should resort 
to the power except in extreme cases, or from mere 
personal motives, he would deserve to be impeached. 
In other words, he would by such action violate his 
oath of office. 

The decision of the Congress of 1789 was almost 
certainly wrong. Not a word is written in the Con- 
stitution about displacement from office, except in 
case of impeachment. The removing power is either 
contained in the appointing power, or it is to be found 
in the clause : " The executive power shall be vested 
in a President of the United States." But to derive 
it from this mere general statement or description is 
contrary to the spirit and manner of the whole instru- 
ment. On any point of constitutional construction 
the opinion of Mr. Madison is entitled to profound 
respect ; but in the present instance the opinion of 
Mr. Webster, I venture to think, outweighs even that 
of Mr. Madison. And it was the judgment of Mr. 
Webster, formed after long reflection, and expressed 
with all his wonted deliberation and strength of rea- 
soning, that an erroneous construction had been 
adopted by the first Congress. Mr. Calhoun, whose 
opinion is also entitled to uncommon weight, fully 
concurred with Mr. Webster in holding that the 
power of removal is part and parcel of the power of 
appointment, and can be rightfully exercised only " by 
and with the advice and consent of the Senate " — 
or in accordance with statutory provisions. He re- 
garded the decision of 1789 as a lasting political 
calamity. 

But if, as these and other eminent statesmen be- 
lieved, a grave error was committed by the Congress 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. >j 

of 1789 in conceding the power of removal to the 
President alone, it was yet an error committed in the 
interest of the Government and without a thought 
of personal or party advantage. And for a long time 
the Executive patronage was exercised with such 
scrupulous care and moderation as to afford scarcely 
any ground of complaint. Office, from the highest 
to the lowest, was generally regarded as a public trust, 
to be bestowed and held for the public good. The 
prevailing sentiment respecting it was analogous to 
that with which, happily, the office of a United States 
Judge is still regarded. Even as late as 1820, when 
the mischievous four years' law was passed, nobody, 
probably, discerned in Executive patronage the germ 
of that- anti-republican and ruthless thing, that mon- 
strum horrendum, ingens, informe, cut lumen ademp- 
tum, which it has since become. 



IV. 

THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 

The history of the spoils system is a history of 
national shame and demoralization. The bitterest 
enemies of republican institutions could have devised 
no more effectual method of undermining and cast- 
ing reproach upon them. For in this system are 
consolidated some of the worst vices of both demo- 
cratic and despotic governments. While marked by 
the intense selfishness, party tyranny, disregard of 
the rights of the minority, vulgar ostracism and pro- 
scription for opinion's sake, which are the bane of 
democracy, it is marked none the less by the adula- 



8 PATRONAGE AND THE EXECUTIVE OATH. 

tion of power and man-worship, the craven, fawning 
temper, the spirit of intrigue, suspicion, and calumny, 
the suppression of individual freedom, and the inso- 
lence of place, which belong to despotism. As the 
very name imports, its whole animus is that of an 
army of soldiers gorging themselves with the spoils 
of victory. The conception is as false as it is infa- 
mous and degrading. Public office is not plunder; 
it is a solemn trust ; and both he who appoints to it 
and he who fills it, are alike bound to have the pub- 
lic good first and chiefly in view. This, to be sure, 
seems to many an extravaganza of political mor- 
ality; but it is the principle by which Washington 
and all the earlier Presidents were governed in dis- 
pensing the Executive patronage. And it is the 
principle to which every President's oath of office 
solemnly binds him. There can be no doubt that 
he violates that oath as really, if not as flagrantly, in 
appointing to public office on merely partisan or per- 
sonal grounds, as he would in conniving at open de- 
falcations and frauds upon the Government. The 
Constitution, it is true, docs not say in so many words 
that the President shall nominate men to office with 
primary and supreme regard to their qualifications 
for the right performance of its duties. That, how- 
ever, is clearly implied ; that is why the appointing 
power is vested in him conjointl}' with the Senate. 
But according to the spoils system, the public offices 
of the country- arc a gigantic party monopoly; no 
man is entitled to one except on party grounds ; no 
man is permitted to have and to hold one unless he 
bears the party name, puts on the party collar, and 
yields implicit obedience to the behests of party lead- 



SPOIL AND THE PARTY RING. g 

ers. It is nothing else, in a word, than a vast party 
" ring," of which the President is head-center, mem- 
bers of Congress the directors-in-chief, and poHticians 
by trade the local managers. It is inspired and sus- 
tained by three grand motives — personal ambition, 
pecuniary reward, and party domination. One class 
desires place for the sake of the honor, the influence, 
and the opportunity of personal distinction ; a far 
larger class desire place for the sake of the emolu- 
ments ; while the whole party desire and seek it for 
their own aggrandizement. 

And in the spoils system the interests of all 
three are mutually cared for, defended, and bound 
up in a strong chain of moral cause and effect. It is 
hard to imagine a more perfect or a more effective 
scheme of political greed and selfishness. And it 
only needs an entire change of administration to 
m.anifest this in a way to astonish the country. The 
same party has now had control of the Government 
for so many years that the younger generation can 
hardly conceive of the wild and disreputable scenes 
which attended such a change in 1841, '45, '49, '53, 
'61. In each case, for weeks and months after his 
inauguration, the new President's name was mixed 
up with all the office -seeking cliques of his party 
throughout the Union ; the telegraph was largely 
occupied in reporting what postmaster or other 
insignificant subordinate had been removed or ap- 
pointed ; Washington City was invaded by a huge 
army of place-hunters, flushed with the sense of their 
patriotic services, pushing their " claims," fawning 
or bullying to get their rewards, and imperilling — in 
one case, it was said, actually destroying — the life of 



10 GROW Til OF THE SYSTEM. 

the Chief Magistrate by their desperate importuni- 
ties. It was a spectacle most pitiable and degrading 
to the manners, morals, and whole manhood of the 
nation. Heaven forbid it should ever be repeated ! 



V. 

STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYSTEM. 

There are four principal stages in the growth of the 
spoils system that deserve to be distinctly noted. 

{a^ The decision of the Congress of 1789 conceding 
to the President alone the power of removal. This 
was the first fatal step, Xht proton pseudos of the sys- 
tem ; but it was only a latent germ — a germ that re- 
quired for its full development a political atmosphere 
and order of sentiment very different from those 
which marked the age of Washington and the earlier 
Presidents. 

{b) The Four Years' law of 1820. Until then the 
tenure of office was, virtually, during the faithful per- 
formance of its duties, the commission, like that of 
an officer in the army or navy, being unrestricted as 
to time. By the law of 1820 every commission was 
to run for four years and then lapse unless renewed. 
Several disbursing officers had defaulted and the law 
was designed to meet such cases. But, as not infre- 
quently happens in special and hasty legislation, the 
real drift and effect of the law was not only to hold dis- 
bursing officers of the Government to a stricter ac- 
countability by the necessity of having their commis- 
sions renewed at the end of every four years — which 
was, so far, a good thing — but also to change en- 



LA W OF 1820. 1 1 

tirely their tenure of office, increase indefinitely their 
dependence upon mere Executive pleasure, expose 
them to the greatest temptation to political subserv- 
iency and man-worship, and, worse than all, to di- 
minish the responsibility, while it multiplied seven- 
fold the power, of the President in dispensing the 
Federal patronage. John Holmes, of Maine, then 
just admitted as a State of the Union, was, I believe, 
the author — in part, at least — of the bill. It seems 
to have excited little, if any, notice or opposition ; 
to have been passed, in fact, almost sub silentio. But 
Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, when he heard 
of its passage, remarked to a friend that it was " one 
of the most dangerous ever passed, and that it would 
work a great REVOLUTION." His prediction has been 
fulfilled to the letter. The law, which was passed and 
approved the closing day of the session. May 15, 
1820, is entitled : ^^ An Act to limit the term of office 
of certain officers therein named and for other pur- 
poses." The first section is as follows : 

" From and after the passing of this act, all district attorneys, 
collectors of the customs, naval officers and surveyors of the cus- 
toms, navy agents, receivers of public moneys for lands, registers 
of the land offices, paymasters in the army, the apothecary-gen- 
eral, the assistant apothecary-general, and the commissary-gen- 
eral of purchases, to be appointed under the laws of the United 
States, shall be appointed for the term of four years, but shall be 
removable from office at pleasure." 

The term of office of postmasters was fixed later. 
The law was retroactive and began to take effect 
Sept. 30, 1820, upon all officers whose commissions 
were dated on or before Sept. 30, 18 16. Up to the 
close of Mr. Monroe's second term^ and during^ the 



12 REPORT OF 1826. 

term of Mr. Adams, however, these officers, if their 
accounts were correct and there was nothing wrong 
about them, were, in almost every instance, reap- 
pointed. As a matter of fact, therefore, no serious 
harm came of the law until Gen. Jackson's acces- 
sion to the Presidency in 1829, when its power of 
mischief as an instrument of personal and party 
revenge and ambition was suddenly revealed in a 
manner to startle the whole nation. In 1826, the 
second year of John Quincy Adams' administration, 
the subject of Executive patronage attracted much at- 
tention, and an elaborate report upon it was made to 
the Senate by a committee, of which Col. Benton was 
chairman. That model republican, Nathaniel Macon, 
of North Carolina ; Mr. Van Buren, afterward Presi- 
dent ; Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina ; Mr. Holmes, of 
Maine ; Mr. White, of Tennessee, and Col. Johnson, 
of Kentucky, afterward Vice-President, were members 
of this committee. In their report t\\Q possible evils 
of Federal patronage are depicted in very vivid colors 
and with great ability. Much of it would form an 
excellent tract on Civil Service Reform in our own 
day. The report traces the overshadowing prerog- 
ative of the President in the matter of patronage 
partly to the action of the Congress of 1789, giving 
to him alone the power of dismissal, and partly to the 
Four Years' Appointment law. 

"This single act (that of 1820) by vacating almost the entire 
civil list, once in every period of a Presidential term, places more 
offices at the command of the President than were known to the 
Constitution at the time of its adoption." 

Having shown that the power and influence of 
Federal patronage, contrary to the argument of The 



COL. BENTON'S VIEWS. 13 

Federalist, is altogether an overmatch for the power 
and influence of State patronage, the report proceeds : 

" The whole of this great power will center in the President. 
The King of England is the ' fountain of honor ; ' the President of 
the United States is the source of patronage. He presides over 
the entire system of Federal appointments, jobs, and contracts. 
He has power over the ' support ' of the individuals who administer 
the system. He makes and unmakes them. He chooses from 
the circle of his friends and supporters, and may dismiss them ; 
and upon all the principles of human actions, will dismiss them, 
as often as they disappoint his expectations. His spirit will ani- 
mate their actions in all the elections to State and Federal offices. 
There may be exceptions, but the truth of a general rule is proved 
by the exceptions. The intended check and control of the Sen- 
ate, without new constitutional or statutory provisions, will cease 
to operate. Patronage will penetrate this body, subdue its ca- 
pacity of resistance, chain it to the car of power, and enable the 
President to rule as easily, and much more securely, with than 
without the nominal check of the Senate. We must then look 
forward to the time when the principle of public action will be 
open and avowed ; the President wants my vote, and I want his 
patronage ; I will vote as he wishes, and he will give me the 
office I wish for. What will this be but the government of one 
man ? " 

If read in view of the fact that Mr. Adams dis- 
missed but two officers during his entire term, and 
especially in view of the literal fulfillment of so many 
of its predictions under the next administration, of 
which its author, Col. Benton, was a trusted leader, 
this Report is one of the most striking and suggest- 
ive documents ever presented to the Senate of the 
United States. 



14 HURRAH FOR JACKSON t 

VL 

"TO THE VICTORS BELONG THE SPOILS." 

(c.) We come now to the third stage in the growth 
of this odious system — namely, the open avowal and 
adoption of the principle that to the victors belong the 
spoils. The avowal, it is said, was first made on the 
floor of the United States Senate, in 1832, by Mr. 
William H. Marcy, afterward so distinguished as 
Governor of New York, and as a member of the 
Cabinets of Presidents Polk and Pierce. When Mr. 
Marcy condensed into this epigrammatic saying the 
new theory of Executive patronage, he little dreamed, 
probably, that it was destined to live so long after 
he himself had turned to dust, or that it would give 
name and character to a system fraught with so 
much evil to the country. He meant it, no doubt, 
simply as the bold utterance of a widespread and 
dominant, though as yet somewhat vague, sentiment 
of the party in power. And the moment was singu- 
larly opportune for such an avowal. The practice 
which it was intended to justify, although a great 
innovation and a great shock to public opinion, had 
been forced upon the country by storm, as it were, 
and was already in the full tide of successful experi- 
ment. It was the time when ^^ Hurrah for Jackson / " 
— a political war-cry, whose echoes have hardly yet 
died away in some of the old Democratic fastnesses — 
resounded throughout the land, outvoicing the noisy 
waves of the sea with its multitudinous roar. " Old 
Hickory," as the Democracy loved to call their idol- 



GEN. JA CKSON AND HIS PARTY. 15 

ized chieftain, seemed predestinated to the task of 
inaugurating the revolutionary policy. The name of 
Andrew Jackson will ever be held in honored and 
grateful remembrance by the American people ; for 
he was a national hero, and at a most critical period 
in the history of the Union, he showed himself a 
great-hearted patriot. But it can not be denied that 
he was a man of very strong and somewhat vindictive 
passions ; or that as a popular leader, he was easily 
swayed by other influences than those of political 
wisdom and justice. 

No President, before or since, surpassed him in 
strength of nerve, or in the obstinate courage of his 
opinions; none ever equalled him in the dauntless 
assurance with which he interpreted the Constitution 
"as he understood it," or the unflinching pluck with 
which he " took the responsibility " of carrying out his 
own viev/s of its meaning. It was no light matter to op- 
pose him, or stand in the way of his favorite plans ; 
and those who incurred his wrath had to meet a frown, 
which few could endure unappalled. As was once 
said of him, he had but to whistle, and his followers, 
like those of Roderick Dhu, started up in every di- 
rection, ready and eager to perform his bidding. 

Instant from copse and heath arose 
Bonnets and spears and bended bows. 

It required civilians of the grandest type and of a 
courage not inferior to his own, to withstand the on- 
set and terror of his head-strong will. Fortunately, 
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun — not to mention others — 
were men of just this stamp. 

Only in such a time of intense party conflict and 



1 6 PRACTICE OF EARLIER PRESIDENTS. 

animosity, and only under a President like Gen. Jack- 
son, could the spoils system have been so suddenly 
and firmly established. Of course, the leaders of 
his party, several of them signers of the report on 
Executive patronage already referred to, counselled 
and cooperated with him, and stoutly defended his 
course, both in Congress and before the people, as 
well as through the press. 



VII. 

DID GEN. JACKSON INAUGURATE THE SPOILS SYSTEM? 
— MR. WEBSTER'S TESTIMONY. 

It has sometimes been denied that Gen. Jackson 
first put in practice the spoils system. But I see not 
on what ground. A few simple statistics ought, as it 
seems to me, to settle the question. During the 
eight years of Washington's administration, he re- 
moved only nine officers, and in every instance for 
cause. The elder Adams dismissed ten during his 
term. Mr. Jefferson, during his eight years, only re- 
moved forty-two, although a large portion of the 
office-holders were strongly opposed to his election. 
Mr. Madison, during his eight years, dismissed but five 
officers. Mr. Monroe, during his two terms, only nine ; 
John Quincy Adams, as I have said, dismissed but two. 
Gen. Jackson, during the first year of his Presidency, 
removed 230 officers; in other words, he removed 
about three times as many in one year as all his pre- 
decessors had dismissed in forty years. Before the 
close of his first term, some 2,000 removals and ap- 



WEBSTER ON THE SPOILS^ 



17 



pointments had been made, according to an estimate 
of Mr. Webster. 

" As far as I remember [I quote from Mr. Webster's speech be- 
fore the National Republican Convention at Worcester, Oct. 12, 
1832,] as far as I remember, sir, after the early part of Mr. Jef- 
ferson's administration, hardly an instance of removal occurred 
for nearly thirty years. If there were any instances, they were few. 
But at the commencement of the present administration, the prec- 
edent of these previous cases was seized on, and a system, a regu- 
lar plan of government, a well-considered scheme for the main- 
tenance of party power by the patronage of of&ce, and this pat- 
ronage to be created by general removal, was adopted and has 
been carried into full operation." 

The following passage from the same speech gives 
a graphic picture of the early working of the system, 
and of the feeling with which it was then regarded 
by wise and thoughtful citizens like Mr. Webster: 

" No worth, public or private — no service, civil or military, was 
of power to resist the relentless greediness of proscription. Sol- 
diers of the late war, soldiers of the revolutionary war, the very 
contemporaries of the independence of the country, all lost their 
situations. No office was too high, and none too low ; for office 
was the spoil, and ' all the spoils,' it is said, 'belong to the 2/zV- 
tors^ If a man holding an office necessary for his daily support 
had presented himself covered with the scars of wounds received 
in every battle, from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, these would not 
have protected him against this reckless rapacity. Nay, sir, if 
Warren himself had been among the living, and had possessed 
any office under Government, high or low, he would not have 
been suffered to hold it a single hour, unless he could show that 
he had strictly complied with the party statutes, and had put a 
well-marked party collar round his neck. Look, sir, to the case 
of the late venerable Major Melville. He was a personification 
of the spirit of 1776, one of the earliest to venture in the cause of 
liberty. He was of the Tea Party ; one of the very first to expose 
himself to British power. And his whole life was consonant 



1 8 OPPOSITION TO THE NEW SYSTEM. 

with this — its beginning'. Always ardent in the cause of liberty ; 
always a zealous friend of his country ; always acting with the 
party which he supposed cherished the genuine republican spirit 
most fervently ; always estimable and respectable in private life, 
he seemed armed af^ainst this miserable petty tyranny of party as 

far as man could bt. But he felt its blow, and he fell When 

his successor was nominated to the Senate, and the Senate were 
informed who had been removed to make way for that nomina- 
tion, its members were struck with horror Mr. President, 

as far as I know, there is no civilized country on earth in which, 
on a change of rulers, there is such an inquisition for spoil as 
we have witnessed in this free republic. When, sir, did any Brit- 
ish minister, Whig or Tory, ever make such an inquest ? When 
did he ever go down to low-water mark, to make an ousting of 
tide-waters ? When did he ever take away the daily bread of 
weighers, and gaugers, and measurers ? When did he ever go 
into the villages to disturb the little post-offices, the mail contracts, 
and everything else in the remotest degree connected with Gov- 
ernment? Sir, a British minister who should do this, and should 
afterwards show his head in a British House of Commons, would 
be received by a universal hiss." 

Before the close of his second term, either by dis- 
missals outright, or by filling with his own adherents 
all vacancies occasioned by the expiration of commis- 
sions under the Four Years' law, Gen. Jackson had 
made a pretty "clean sweep" of Federal officers 
throughout the country. It was called a " rotation," 
but was, in fact, a revolution, perfect and entire, in 
the civil service of the nation. 

And yet even the iron will and imperious, over- 
bearing temper of Gen. Jackson, backed by his im- 
mense popularity, could not establish the new sys- 
tem without encountering, as we have seen, the most 
strenuous opposition. At every step it was resisted 
by some of the greatest statesmen of the country. 



BILL TO REPEAL LAW OF 1S20. ig 

They pointed out its anti-republican and dangerous 
character with extraordinary earnestness and depth 
of conviction. Its corrupting influence was for years 
the burden of indignant protest and denunciation by 
the Whig party in their national platforms, in the 
resolutions of their State conventions, in the speeches 
of their leaders, and in the Whig press all over the 
land. Various attempts were made also in Congress 
to stop the contagion. In 1835 a long and very able 
report on the subject was made to the Senate by Mr. 
Calhoun, At the same time a bill was introduced by 
him to repeal the Four Years' law of 1820, and to 
regulate the power of removal. Still conceding to 
the President this power, it required that in ail nom- 
inations made to the Senate to fill vacancies occa- 
sioned by its exercise, he should state the fact of 
the removal, and also the reasons for it. The bill 
passed the Senate by a large majority — 31 to 16; 
but failed in the House. While this bill was pend- 
ing, Mr. Webster made his characteristic speech on 
the appointing and removing power. Henry Clay, 
Silas Wright, William C. Preston, Col. Benton^ 
James Buchanan, Samuel L. Southard, John M. Clay- 
ton, Ether Shepley, and other eminent Senators, also 
took part in the discussion, which ran on day after 
day. There were political giants in the Senate -in 
those days, and this debate showed their strength. 

MR. CALHOUN'S POSITION. 

But Mr. Calhoun surpassed them all — if not in the 
ability, yet — in the glowing energy and zeal with which 
he spoke. No one, indeed, can read his report and 



20 CALHOUN'S POSITION. 

his various speeches on this subject without admiring 
their manly boldness, independence, and patriotic 
spirit. If in his theory of the Constitution as a com- 
pact between sovereign States and in his pro-slavery 
doctrines, Mr. Calhoun was the great political heresi- 
arch of the nation, in reference to the whole matter 
of civil service reform he was one of the wisest, 
purest, and most high-minded statesmen the country 
has produced. No man ever denounced the spoils sys- 
tem in terms of more unmeasured severity, or pointed 
out its evils and warned the people against its fatal 
consequences with nobler fidelity to the highest prin- 
ciples of civic duty. "If you do not put it down," 
said he, " it will put YOU down." His letter to Dr. 
Channing, first published a few weeks ago in The 
Tribtinc, was written just after his report to the Sen- 
ate, and is a striking comment upon it, as well as a 
beautiful testimony to the unity of patriotic senti- 
ment and the love of peace, which, in spite of their 
sharp antagonism on slavery and the nature of the 
Union, marked those illustrious men. After thanking 
Dr. Channing for his sermon on war, Mr. Calhoun 
adds : 

" Permit me, in return, to present you with my report on Ex- 
ecutive patronage. Thougli the two subjects are apparently 
entirely disconnected, he who will look below the surface will 
see a most intimate relation between them. We would have few 
wars if there did not exist in every community a body, separate 
from the rest of the community, who have a direct interest in 
war. That body is the great and influential corps of office- 
holders and oflice-seekers, contractors, agents, jobbers, specula- 
tors, to whom war brings an abundant harvest. This corps, as 
you will see by the report, is already veiy formidable, and will be 



HIS DENUNCIATION OF THE SPOILS. 2 1 

ready to plujige the country into war either to prevent reform or 
to increase their gain." 

I can not refrain from quoting a few more of the 
great South Carolinian's terse and ringing utterances 
on this question. For many years, as we learn from 
his own lips, reform in the civil service was upper- 
most in his thoughts and a leading object of his pub- 
lic life. 

The following is from one of his speeches on the 
bill to repeal the Four Years' law : 

'' Let us not be deceived by names. The power in question is 
too great for the Chief Magistrate of a free state. It is in its nat- 
ture an imperial power, and if he be permitted to exercise it, his 
authority must become as absolute as that of the autocrat of all 
the Russias. To give him the power to dismiss at his will and 
pleasure, without limitation or control, is to give him an absolute 
and unlimited control over the subsistence of almost all who hold 
office under Government. Let him have the power, and the sixty 
thousand who now hold emploj'ment under Government would 
become dependent upon him for the means of existence. Of this 
vast multitude I may venture to assert, that there are very few 
whose subsistence does not, more or less, depend upon their pub- 
lic employment. Who does not see that a power so unlimited and 
despotic over this great and powerful corps must tend to corrupt 
and debase those who compose it, and to convert them into the 
supple and willing instruments of him who wields it .'' We al- 
ready experience its corroding operation. It is in vain to attempt 
to deny the charge. I have marked the progress of this base and 
servile spirit in a thousand instances within the last few years, and 
have seen the spirit of independent men, holding office, sink un- 
der the dread of this fearful power ; too honest and too firm to 
become the instruments or flatterers of power, yet too prudent, 
with all the consequences before them, to whisper disapprobation 
of what in their hearts they condemn. Let the present state of 
things continue — let it be understood that none are to acquire 



22 THE SPOILS AND AMERICAN CHARACTER. 

the public honors or to obtain them but by flattery and base 
compHance, and in a few generations the American character 

will become utterly corrupt and debased We have lost 

all sensibility ; we have become callous and hardened under the 
operation of these deleterious practices and principles, which 
characterize the times. What a few years since would have 
shocked and roused the whole community, is now scarcely per- 
ceived or felt. Then the dismissal of a few inconsiderable offi- 
cers, on party grounds as was supposed, was followed by a gen- 
eral burst of indignation ; but now the dismissal of thousands, 
when it is openly avowed that the public offices are the ' spoils of 
the victors,' produces scarcely a sensation. It passes as an ordi- 
nary event." 

These extracts indicate the character and tone of 
his report to the Senate and of his speeches in its de- 
fense in 1835. Eleven years after, in 1846, he recurred 
to the subject in the same temper. The following 
weighty sentences are from the closing part of his 
speech : 

" A large mass of society enter into politics as a mere mode of 
obtaining a livelihood. When I affirm that already as many per- 
sons live upon the expenditures of this Government [this, let it be 
remembered, was more than thirty years ago !] as the half of the 
great population engaged in the cultivation of the cotton lands, 

the extent of the evil may be imagined But this is not 

all. Put the half of the income of the cotton property into a lot- 
tery, to be drawn ever>' four years ; so many men will go into 
that lottery in hopes of drawing a prize, that when the victor)' is 
achieved, but one in forty can be rewarded. What is the result? 
The thirty-nine disappointed, and who fought only for the spoils, 
turn round in process of time — when political degeneracy takes 
place, as it will — to the other side, and seek the next turn of the 
wheel when another lottery is drawn. Thus they go on. Can any 
wise man — can any patriotic man — can any genuine friend of hu- 
man liberty, look at such a spectacle without the most poignant 
rpgret ? He must be little informed indeed in politics who does 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 



23 



not know all this ; and knowing all this, he will be asserting one 
of the most untrue and monstrous propositions on the face of 
God's earth, who says that this is a 'popular doctrine.' What ! 
' a popular doctrine ? ' It is the very reverse. It is the doctrine 

to create a king and to annihilate liberty The Presidental 

election is no longer a struggle for great principles, but only a 
great struggle as to who shall have the spoils of office. Look at 
the machinery ! A convention nominates the President — in 
which, not unfrequently, many of the representatives of the 
States join in a general understanding to divide the offices 
among themselves and their friends. And thus they make a 
President, who has no voice at all in the selection of officers ! 
These things are known ; and I say it is surprising that, being 
known, gentlemen who advocate the opposite doctrine assume to 
be democratic. No. The democratic doctrine is precisely the 
reverse of what they affect to teach. It goes against patronage 
and influence, and gives no more patronage than what the strict 
necessity of the case requires. Patronage, wisely and judiciously 
dispensed on the part of the Executive, may have a salutary 
effect in giving concentration and strength to the Government ; 
but this wholesale traffic in public offices for party purposes is 
wholly pernicious and destructive of popular rights. Properly 
applied, the policy is admirable ; but as soon as the Government 
becomes the mere creature of seekers of office, your free institu- 
tions are nearly at an end. In this matter I have been uniform 
and sincere — whether right or wrong, time will disclose." 

" I would no more permit the Chief Magistrate of a country to 
displace those who are charged with mere ministerial offices, 
without cause, on party grounds, than I would permit him to 
divest them of their freeholds ; the power to divest them of the 
one is calculated to make them as servile and dependent as the 
power to divest them of the other." 

One more passage shall suffice. It occurs in his 
" Discourse on Government," written, probably, in 
1848-49, only a year or two before his death : 

" Another effect (namely, of the decision of the Congress of 
1789) has been to engender the most corrupting, loathsome, and 



-24 "^ FRAGMENT OF CflAOS." 

dangerous disease that can infect a popular government; I mean 
that known by the name of ' i/te spoils.' It is a disease easily 
contracted under all forms of government; hard to prevent, and 
most difficult to cure, when contracted ; but of all the forms of 
government, it is, by far, the most fatal in those of a popular 
character. The decision which left the President free to exerjise 
this mighty power according to his will and pleasure, uncontrolled 
and unregulated by Congress, scattered broadcast the seeds of 
this dangerous disease throughout the whole system." 



VIII. 

THE SYSTEM UNDER PRESIDENT VAN BUREN. 

Upon the accession of Mr. Van Buren to the Presi- 
dency, the new system had been in operation long 
enough to bear fruit after its kind; and this fruit now 
began to appear all over the country as full of deadly 
poison. The history of the defalcations of public 
officers during his term and the second term of Gen. 
Jackson, is mostly unknown to the present genera- 
tion ; but it surpasses, if possible, even that of the 
Whisky Ring as a lesson in civil service reform. The 
shameful story is told in Document 297, furnished 
the House of Representatives by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, March 30, 1838. It contains two hundred 
and sixty letters to defaulting collectors and receiv- 
ers. My brother, in a speech in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, called it, very justly, " a fragment of chaos." 
" It is," said he, " a moral, political, and literary curi- 
osity. If you are a laughing philosopher you will 
find in it ample food for mirth ; if you belong to the 
other school you can not but weep at the folly and 
imbecility it exhibits. Its contents arc as strange 



DEFALCATIONS IN \%IS-^. 2$ 

as the 'hell broth' that boiled and bubbled in the 
witches' cauldron." 

Swartwout, the collector of this port, was the 
largest defaulter. His embezzlements were immense, 
and had been carried on, undetected, for a series of 
years. On being found out, he was delivered over 
to the tender mercies of the opposition in Congress ; 
the Administration, it was charged, dropping him as 
the bear, when hotly pursued, drops one of her cubs, 
for the purpose of distracting the attention of the 
hunter, and so escaping with the rest of her young. 
His case was one of scores, and, although the largest, 
was by no means the most flagitious. One land offi- 
cer's accounts exhibited his defalcations as of some 
$50,000 or more in money. But in addition to this, 
being a "land rat" also, he had, by virtue of his 
office, transferred to himself, without even paying for 
it a single dollar, some 28,000 acres of the public 
domain; enough for a German principality! And 
what is stranger still, his pretended title was actually 
recognized by the Secretaiy of the Treasury and 
portions of the land were being sold by officers of 
the Government as the property of the defaulter. 

IMo such document, I suppose, has evef, before or 
since, appeared in the records of the national Legis- 
lature. These shocking defalcations were made the 
most of by the Whigs and contributed not a little 
to the sweeping political revolution of 1840, when 
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too " were elected. Had 
anybody predicted in 1837-40 that in the event of 
their gaining power the Whig party would go back 
on all their teaching about the necessity of civil service 
reform, and would at once adopt and put in practice 



26 ^r//C ARE TO BLAME? 

I he very abuse which they had so bravely de- 
nounced, thousands of good men among them would 
have exclaimed with Hazael, '^Biit xohat ! is ihy serv- 
ant a dog that he sho^ild do this great tiling f And 
yet it is a matter of plain record that the zeal of 
the Whigs for reform on this question soon melted 
into thin air, and but for the sudden death of Presi- 
dent Harrison few Democratic office-holders would 
probably have long retained their places. The " spoils " 
poison had already infected the v.hole country, en- 
gendering a franctic lust of office which laughed to 
scorn all thought of party consistency. Suffice it to 
say, that from the Presidency of Gen, Jackson to that 
of Gen. Grant, the vile system has been practiced 
alike by both parties, in state and nation, and is to- 
day the ruling policy of the country. 

Gen. Grant did indeed, at one time, make an ear- 
nest effort to abolish it ; but he was so thwarted and 
opposed by leading politicians of the Republican 
party, and so feebly seconded even by public opin- 
ion, that at length he gave up the attempt in des- 
pair. He found out that he had undertaken a harder 
task than the capture of Vicksburg, or the march 
through the Wilderness. But he deserves no little 
praise for his honest endeavors. 

The blame of the spoils system, then, can be fairly 
imputed neither to the Democrats nor to the Repub- 
licans exclusively. If the Democrats first established 
the hateful policy, the Whigs and then the Republicans 
freely accepted and adopted it as their own. And in 
each case it was done in violation of plighted faith. 
In each case it was done by trampling under foot 
solemn professions and pledges, which had been pro- 



BOTH PARTIES TO BLAME. 2/ 

fusely made, and patriotic hopes, which had been 
widely excited among the people, while the canvass 
was going on. Both parties, therefore, are deeply 
involved in the guilt, and ought to humble them- 
selves on account of it, asking pardon of God and 
their injured country, and joining hands in bringing 
forth fruit meet for repentance. They could not do 
a v/iser and better thing, or one that would bring 
them greater and more lasting honor. 

It seems to me only just to add, that the abuse 
was almost sure to come, sooner or later; its germs 
were latent already in the decision of the Congress 
of 1789 and the Four Years' law of 1820, not to say 
in human nature ; and the Presidency of Gen. Jack- 
son was, therefore, the occasion rather than the real 
cause of its sudden and rank development. 

IX. 

CONGRESSIONAL PATRONAGE. 

(</.) I come now to the fourth and final stage in 
the progress of the system — namely, the transfer of 
the Executive patronage, or at least a large portion 
of it, from the President to members of Congress. 
The transfer was made gradually, but has now become 
an established custom — the unwritten law, indeed, of 
party politics. It seems to be based upon several 
grounds, (i). And first, that of locality. A certain 
portion of the Federal patronage, for example, is dis- 
pensed in the State of Maine at large ; and the State of 
Maine, in the persons of her Senators in Congress, is 
fairly entitled, it is alleged, to say how this patronage 



28 THE PRINCIPLE OF LOCALITY. 

shall be dispensed. Another and smaller portion is dis- 
pensed in each Congressional district of Maine, and 
the national Representative of that district is entitled, 
under certain restrictions, to wield it. A vastly larger 
portion of the Federal patronage is to be dispensed, on 
the same principle, in and by the State of New York. 
Another portion goes to Illinois ; another to Nebraska ; 
another far away to that State upon which " Cronin " 
is just now fixing all eyes ; another to California, and 
so on until the almost interminable circuit of the 
Union is completed. 

This principle of locality is regarded as something 
very sacred and inviolable. There is thought to be 
special grace in it, more particularly when embodied 
in a United States Senator. It is guarded with a 
jealous vigilance not unlike that with which a Turk 
guards the privacy of his harem. Let a member of 
Congress from an Eastern State, for example, pre- 
sume, in the interest of the Government, to speak a 
word touching the impropriety of appointing, reap- 
pointing, or dismissing a public officer in a Western 
State ; and — no matter how truthfully he speaks, no 
matter if he speak at the urgent request of leading 
citizens of the community in the midst of which and 
for whose benefit the office exists — the chances are 
that he will be quickly given to understand, if not 
told sharply to his face, that he had better " mind his 
own business." And just so if the case supposed were 
reversed. Eastern politicians are, doubtless, quite as 
exacting and quite as touchy in this matter as those 
from the farthest West. In truth, whether from the 
East or the West, the North or the South, one can 
hardly deny that they do well to be angr>' at any real 



SE.YA TORIAL CLAIMS. 



29 



interference with their right of local nomination or 
appointment, if such a right really belongs to them. 
Have they the right ? is the previous and main question. 
Such is the operation of the geographical rule. It 
tends to generate a narrow, selfish, and intolerant 
temper in the appointment of public officers — a tem- 
per most unbecoming the character of a great and free 
government. But even admitting that a State is en- 
titled to control the Federal patronage within its own 
bounds, how does it come to pass that this power is 
chiefly in the hands of two men ? 

(2). This suggests another ground of the practice^ 
that of incidental prerogative, as it might, perhaps, not 
inaptly be called. It is assumed that the disposal of 
Federal patronage is a power incident to the Senatorial 
office (for the sake of brevity I confine myself to this), 
and one of its natural perquisites, so to say. The two 
Senators from New York, according to this view, 
when elected to their exalted positions, became at 
the same time clothed with the prerogative of saying 
who shall, and who shall not, fill the most important 
Federal offices in the State ;— some of these offices 
being also among the most important in the Union. 

(3). A third ground upon which Congressional pat- 
ronage bases itself, is that of practiced necessity. 
Neither the President nor heads of departments, it is 
said, can possibly know who are the right men for 
the almost numberless places of trust and honor 
throughout the country. Perhaps not one of them 
has ever set foot in half of the States of the Union. 
They must rely upon testimony and advice in mak- 
ing a large majority of their appointments ; and it is 
better, on the whole, that they should follow the tes- 



30 



ABSURD NOTIOX OF LOCAL RIGHT. 



timony and advice of members of Congress who repre- 
sent the States and districts concerned. 

Such, as I understand, are some of the reasons for the 
transfer of so large a portion of Federal patronage to 
members of Congress. But they appear to me utterly 
insufficient to justify it. As to the first, it is enough 
to say that, while Federal patronage is dispensed, as 
a matter of course, in different parts of the country, 
it is dispensed for their common advantage ; it is dis- 
pensed in order to the due administration and execu- 
tion of the laws, in order to protect the rights and 
liberties of the people, and to promote the general 
welfare. The appointment of good and faithful 
agents of the Government for this high service is the 
first and chief thing ; the exercise of what is called 
patronage is merely a needful means to secure such 
agents. And it is indispensable to this end that the 
power and responsibility should be where the Con- 
stitution places it, in the general Government, not in 
the States. But even if it were lodged in the States, it 
would rightly belong to, and should be wielded by, the 
people on the spot, not by their servants, whom they 
have sent to Washington City for a very different 
purpose. I do not mean to deny that the local prin- 
ciple is to be considered ; a wise government will al- 
ways take it into account. But I do think that in its 
application the principle is sometimes pushed to a 
foolish extreme, and that the pretensions based upon 
it are often very childish and ridiculous. It has come 
to be almost as difficult a matter for the President 
himself to adjust and satisfy these conflicting claims, 
even in the appointment of members of his own Cab- 
inet, or of judges of the Supreme Court and of 



CONGRESSIONAL USURPATION. oj 

foreign ministers, as to settle a Parish will case, or 
to solve the most complicated problems of Life Insur- 
ance. The tendency of the unreasonable and super- 
stitious notions on this point, has been, and always 
will be, to belittle and emasculate the public service. 
At all events, the claims of locality afford no proper 
justification of the transfer of Executive patronage 
to members of Congress. 

And the second ground assigned for it is equally 
baseless. The Senatorial office is clothed with no 
such incidental prerogative. No such political per- 
quisites belong to it. The whole thing is a pure as- 
sumption, sustained, it is true, by evil custom and 
plausible fallacies ; but the Constitution lends it 
no sanction or countenance whatever. That gives 
the power of appointment to the President and 
the Senate as an executive body — not to the in- 
dividual Senators. And it gives no share of the 
power to the House of Representatives. The 
existing practice, therefore, has wrought a virtual 
change in the Organic Law. It is a gross two-fold 
breach of the Constitution ; it usurps one of the 
most important executive functions, and it does so 
not only in defiance of a general principle, but of an 
express constitutional provision, viz. : That if the ap- 
pointing power in the case of " inferior officers of the 
United States " is taken from the President and Senate, 
then it shall be vested in the President alone, or in 
the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. 
Congress may distribute the appointing povv'er in the 
ways here indicated ; it may also, at its discretion, fix 
the tenure of office — except in the case of United 
States judges— determine the manner of dismissal, 



32 



SEXA TO RIAL PA T RON AGE. 



define the duties of each officer — in a word, regulate 
the whole appointing and removing power of the 
Government ; but for all that, it has no more right to 
vest this power in its own members, than it has to do 
so in the case of foreign ministers, or judges of the 
Supreme Court. Supposing, however, that the Sena- 
torial office is clothed with the prerogative of dic- 
tating the principal Federal appointments in the State 
at large ; how happens this prerogative in so many 
cases to be exercised by one only of the Senators? 
and in other cases by neither of them ? 

Where, for example, during the past two years, did 
the eminent Republican senator from New York get 
the right to dictate the Senatorial appointments in 
this State, while the eminent and equally worthy 
Democratic senator was as helpless in the matter 
as if he had represented little Delaware, instead of 
the great Empire State? Is he not as patriotic and 
as well qualified to name good and true men for the 
public service as his brilliant colleague? Do not the 
Constitution and the laws of the land invest him with 
exactly the same rights and privileges, and impose 
on him the same duties? There can be, it seems to 
me, only one candid answer to these questions. Why, 
then, does one Senator, and he representing the po- 
litical sentiments of a minority of the people, absorb 
into himself so large a portion of the Federal patron- 
age, while the other Senator is not allowed — unless as 
a personal favor or courtesy — to name a custom-house 
gauger, or a tide-waiter? No other reason for this 
strange anomaly can be assigned, than that of party 
monopoly and proscription. 

And is that the genuine outcome of a century of 



IS THIS A CENTURY'S PROGRESS? 



33 



American independence and nearly ninety years of 
civil freedom, culture, and progress under the Con- 
stitution of the United States ? I say nothing now of 
the manner and apparent motives of too many of these 
Senatorial appointments, not in New York alone, but 
all over the Union, especially in some of the Southern 
States ; I say nothing of the bones of sharp contention 
they not infrequently become, or of the bitter rivalries, 
intrigues, suspicions, and calumnies they are the occa- 
sion of; I say nothing of the partisan "strikers," 
blackmailers, detectives, and other detestable charac- 
ters, more or less mixed up with them ; but taking 
the system at its best estate, and in its most respect- 
able manifestations, I ask again, if all this is a genuine 
product and fair sample of a century of American 
civilization, self-government, and political progress? 
If so, alas ! for the future of republican institutions. 

As to the third ground on which Congressional 
patronage is justified — namely, that of practical neces- 
sity, but few words are needful. It stands to reason, 
that in performing so grave a duty as the selection 
of the public servants — of those upon whom will de- 
volve the task of conducting, honestly and faithfully, 
the varied branches of public business — the President, 
and all others entrusted with appointing power, will 
seek the 'best sources of knowledge, and thankfully 
receive information from any and every accessible 
quarter. As a matter of propriety, if not of necessity, 
they will often take counsel of members of Con- 
gress, and, if these are upright, true men, will attach 
much weight to their opinion and recommendation. 
And members of Congress, on their part, would be 
highly blameworthy if, when solicited, they did not 



34 



FACILITIES FOR GETTING INFORM A TIOA\ 



gladly give their counsel and information, not for re- 
ward, but as a grateful debt they owe their constitu- 
ents and their countiy. To give their best advice, 
indeed, is a constitutional duty of Senators whenever 
they meet in executive session. It is to be taken 
for granted, that members of Congress — especially 
old members — will often be able to render very val- 
uable service of this sort. But, then, how many other 
citizens are there in every town, and district, and 
State, who can do it equally well, oftentimes much 
better? 

It is not, after all, so hard to obtain trustworthy in- 
formation and counsel, if a man has the good sense 
and tact to know where to seek and how to elicit and 
use them. These valuable treasures are not stored 
away in Congressional bosoms alone. There are a 
great many thousands of sensible, upright, and patri- 
otic men outside of Washington City, and yet in 
easy communication with it. For we must consider 
that by means of the railroad, the telegraph, and the 
daily press, with its wonder-working power of gather- 
ing knowledge, the most distant States of the Union 
are brought within speaking distance of the national 
Capital ; and it is far easier to-day for Gen. Grant to 
get quick and accurate information about the leading 
citizens of California, or Oregon, and what is going 
on in those remote States, than it was for President 
Washington, in 1789, to obtain such information about 
New Hampshire or Georgia. Congressional aid and 
guidance in the exercise of the appointing power arc, 
I am inclined to think, far less indispensable than 
they were seventy-five or eighty years ago. Where 
one entirely unsuitable or bad man is nominated by 



POSITION OF GOV. HA YES. 35 

the President for an important office through sheer 
inability to obtain the needful information respecting 
him, half a dozen unsuitable or bad men are probably 
appointed to important offices by appeals to the good 
nature, prejudices, and selfish ambition of members of 
Congress, or under the pressure of unfulfilled pledges 
and promises. Where the office-seeker is a feuda- 
tory or retainer of some Senatorial baron, it is not 
only hard, but dangerous to turn a deaf ear to his 
claims. 

X. 

POSITION OF GOV. HAYES. 

But all that I have been trying to say about Con- 
gressional patronage, is condensed into a few lines 
of Gov. Hayes' admirable letter accepting the nomi- 
nation for President. Never have the pernicious 
effects of this usurpation of Executive power by 
members of Congress been better stated : 

" The offices in these cases have become not merely rewards 
for party sei-vices, but rewards for services to party leaders. This 
system destroys the independence of the separate departments 
of the Government. It tends directly to extravagance and official 
incapacity ; it is a temptation to dishonesty ; it hinders and im- 
pairs that careful supervision and strict accountability by which 
alone faithful and efficient service can be secured ; it obstructs 
the prompt removal and sure punishment of the unworthy ; in 
every way it degrades the civil service and the character of the 
Government. It is felt, I am confident, by a large majority of 
the members of Congress, to be an intolerable burden and an un- 
warrantable hindrance to the proper discharge of their legiti- 
mate duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should be 
thorough, radical, and complete." 



36 THE TEX U RE OF OFFICE LA W. 

Every one of these golden sentences might easily 
be expanded into a chapter, for which the experience 
of the Government would afford any number of cases 
in point. The whole passage betokens not only very 
careful observation, but long and earnest thought on 
the subject ; and for this very reason, I have no doubt 
that in the minds of those members of Congress who 
do 7iot feel the present system to be " an intolerable 
burden," but regard it rather as a badge of honor 
and cling to it as the old toper to his cup, Gov. 
Hayes' letter of acceptance excited secret misgiving 
and disgust. Stolen waters are sweet ; and not a few 
Congressmen seem to take especial delight, too often 
to the neglect of their proper duties, in playing the 
part of busybodies in Executive matters, both doing 
and speaking things which they ought not. 

Such are the four principal stages by which the 
Federal patronage has come to be so tremendous a 
political power, and the spring of such unspeakable 
mischief to the country. The tenure of office law, 
passed as a curb upon President Johnson after he 
had begun to " swing around the circle," modified 
somewhat the then existing practice, but it was en- 
acted in the interest of the Republican party rather 
than that of civil service reform, and is wholly in- 
adequate as a cure of the spoils system. It not only 
leaves untouched most of the old evils, but in some 
respects, it is to be feared, actually increases and forti- 
fies them. This is almost ahva}-s the effect of mere 
party legislation. 



AGENCIES FOR GATHERING THE SPOILS. 37 

XL 

MACHINERY OF THE SYSTEM. 

No great political abuse becomes established with- 
out at the same time organizing an appropriate sys- 
tem of agencies for maintaining and perpetuating its 
power. Although a diseased action of the body 
politic, it yet has, like all disease, its own laws of 
growth and influence. It works both by contagion 
and by design ; in the way of evil example and by 
crafty, unscrupulous management. With equal energy 
and skill it seizes upon weak points in existing politi- 
cal machinery, or divises new methods. The primary 
election, the primary assembly, the caucus, the exec- 
utive committee, and the nominating convention, 
will illustrate my meaning. These are the ordinary 
and convenient, if not the best, arrangements for 
initiating and conducting our political contests. But 
each of them has a weak point ; it is liable to be neg- 
lected by the better class of citizens, and so to fall 
into the bands, if not of the worst, yet of an inferior 
class of citizens. Each of them, therefore, may readily 
be diverted from its proper use and turned into a 
mere instrument of selfish and scheming partisans. 
And this is just what is all the time occurring. But 
when the primary meeting or assembly, the caucus, 
the executive committee, and the nominating con- 
vention are once in the hands of scheming partisans, 
the honest, enlightened sentiment of the community is 
paralyzed ; the right man for the right place is ignored ; 
all is done according to what is called " the slate " pre- 
pared by the secret wire-pullers ; and if the best man 



38 



THE machine:' 



is selected and a right policy laid down, it is not on 
principle at all, but as an incidental means of success ; 
it is a tub thrown out to pacify the popular whale and 
divert his attention. 

Everything, in fine, is managed just as if an elec- 
tion were a game of chance, the public offices so much 
money, and the party leaders so many gamblers play- 
ing for the stake. And when the election involves the 
principal offices of a State — still more, when it involves 
the principal offices of the Union — no argument is 
needed to show what an exciting game it becomes. 
In the great cities, where the Federal patronage is 
chiefly dispensed, this prostitution of the ordinary po- 
litical agencies to personal and partisan ends is easiest 
and most effective, and here, accordingly, the evil 
reaches its maximum. The Custom-house and the 
Post-office especially tend to become ruling centres of 
electioneering influence and intrigue, not to say in- 
timidation. Candidates for Governors, Senators, and 
Representatives in Congress are often named and vir- 
tually chosen by them, aiid thus a league of mutual 
friendship, cooperation, and defense is formed be- 
tween the powers at Washington City and the army 
of office-holders and office-seekers throughout the 
country, whereby their common interests are consoli- 
dated into a sort of political joint-stock company and 
so insured against hostile attack and loss. 

This system of " machine " politics, as it is aptly 
called, is not, it is true, peculiar to our times or to 
our own country; nor is it confined wholly to the 
sphere of civil affairs. In principle it has existed in 
all countries and in all ages, where men combined for 
securing the triumph of party plans and opinions, or 



PARTY MANAGEMENT AN OLD STORY. 



39 



winning the prizes of honor and station ; and it has 
prevailed in church as well as state. In fact, the his- 
tory of ecclesiastical councils and assemblies would 
afford, perhaps, the most striking of all illustrations 
of its power and its malign influence. This only 
verifies the old saying that is written : When the 
sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, 
Satan came also among them to present himself before 
the Lord. There is no form of human association, 
however necessary or excellent in its design, which 
may not readily be converted into an instrument of 
selfish greed, ambition, and partisanship. The best 
motives may be most easily counterfeited. It costs a 
severe course of training and self-discipline to be a 
thoroughly honest, patriotic, disinterested, and truth- 
ful man ; but it costs no effort whatever to pretend 
to be such. Anybody (says Aristotle in reference to 
a siiriilar point) " anybody can miss the mark ; but 
invariably to hit it in the very eye — that is the work 
of rare, consummate skill." 

Scores of party strikers and wire-pullers may be 
found in any ward of this city, whose devotion to 
their country and its best interests, if you judge by 
their talk, is far greater than Washington ever claimed 
for himself. And the same may be sard of not a few 
of the leading party managers. In what high-sound- 
ing resolutions are they wont to ventilate their pent- 
up zeal for the public good ! It is not possible, then, 
to keep artful and bad men — men of selfish, ignoble, 
and coarse passions — out of politics. In no sphere do 
they swarm in greater force ; in no sphere are they 
more at home ; and nowhere have they freer or larger 
scope for the exertion of their blighting influence. 



40 



" l^E WEKE THE FIRST." 



Here, as almost nowhere else, they know how to 
bring their craftiest strategy and tactics into play. 
Their objective point is, invariably, to get full control 
of the machinery ; for that once secured, all the rest 
follows well-nigh as a matter of course. It becomes 
then a comparatively easy thing to defy, or to cir- 
cumvent and override, the popular will, if that is 
against them ; or to trim their sails to the favoring 
wind of public opinion, if that happens to blow in the 
right direction. And in order to get control of the 
machine, they always contrive if possible to initiate, 
or at least to take part in those private, confidential 
talks and conferences which so often form the real 
beginning of the most important party movements — 
just as certain tiny, delicate threads form the nucleus 
of the great fly-catching spider's web. They never 
fail also to attend the primary meeting, and rarely fail 
to be on hand and in possession of the place, Avhen 
their unsuspecting fellow-citizens, who are in quest of 
Civil Service Reform, arrive. In almost everj-thing, in- 
deed, they are ahead. Like the sailors in Coleridge's 
A ncicnt Mariner, — 

We were the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea, 

they are " the first " in every great political oper- 
ation, more especially in having " suggested " the 
names of successful candidates. And in this struggle 
to get and keep control of the party reins and whip, 
they are troubled by no petty scruples. AJl the 
maxims of skillful roguery and deception seem to be 
at their tongue's end. How well, for example, they 
follow — in spirit, if not to the letter — the admonitions 



THE SPOILS MAXIMS. 4 1 

which Mrs. Margery Lobkins, or " Peggy Lob," as 
she was familiarly called, gives to " Leetle Paul " in 
" Paul Clifford : " 

" Mind thy kittychism, child, and reverence old age. Never 
steal ! 'specially when any one be in the way. Never go snacks 
with them as be older than you ; 'cause why ? The older a cove 
be, the more he cares for hisself, and the less for his partner. 
At twenty we diddles the public, at forty we diddles our cronies. 
Be modest, Paul, and stick to your sitivation in life. Read 
your Bible, and talk like a pious 'tin. People goes by your 
WORDS more than your actions. If you wants what is not 
your own, try and do without it ; and, if you can not do with- 
out it, take it away by insinivation, not bluster. They as 
swindles does more and risks less than they as robs," 

But if this policy of meek hypocrisy and insinuation 
prove ineffectual or out of place, they are always 
ready to change their tactics and adopt the rougher 
methods. "There, boy," said the aforesaid " Peggy," 
stroking "Leetle Paul's" head fondly and giving 
him a piece of money, " you does right not to play 
for nothing, it's a loss of time ! But play with those 
as be less than yourself, and then you can go for to 
beat 'em if they says you go for to cheat." 

These precious lessons of worldly wisdom given to 
little Paul, indicate very clearly the sort of principles 
upon which the political machine has been too often 
run, not alone in this city, but more or less in whole 
States, and even in the country at large. It can not 
be otherwise while the spoils system bears sway. 
Under its influence the best elements in a party 
will be inevitably repressed, and the worst elements, 
sooner or later, are sure to gain the mastery and 
leaven the whole lump. 

Let me not, however, be misunderstood. I am not 



42 



A'O ORGAXIZATIO.V PERFECT. 



SO foolish as to decry political organization, or to 
fancy that the choice of our rulers and the other 
weighty functions of civil society can be performed 
without appropriate agencies. Nor am I foolish 
jCnough to expect any political organization to be 
perfect, or any political agencies, however proper and 
excellent, to move without friction. Very far from it. 
What I denounce is the utter perversion of political 
organization to mere personal and party ends ; it is 
such an abuse of political agencies as makes them 
instruments of evil instead of good to the commu- 
nity. Who can deny the fearful prevalence of such 
abuse and perversion ? and that not only in the 
great voluntary associations of part)% but in the very 
bodies whose appointed duty and sole business it is, 
by wise legislation, to seek and promote the public 
good? It is notorious that the assembling of even 
the national Legislature is sometimes the cause of 
widespread anxiety, while its adjournment is hailed 
with a feeling of general relief. 

Still less would I insinuate sweeping, indiscriminate 
charges against all politicians or all office-holders. It 
would be the height of injustice. I have been speak- 
ing of the inevitable tendency of a system, and not 
of the character of individuals. Our public life is 
honored and adorned by many faithful servants of 
the Republic, whose hands are unsoiled, who despise 
deceit and trickery, and whose patriotism is sound to 
the core. I believe not a few of our Senators and 
Representatives in Congress, of both parties, and 
from all sections of the country, are as pure, as high- 
minded, and as loyal in tiieir devotion to the public 
interests as any of those who have gone before them. 



POLITICS AS A TRADE. 43 

They are men, and are, therefore, falHble and imper- 
fect ; but their desire and honest aim is to fulfill, 
according to the best of their ability, the trust com- 
mitted to them by the people. 

Nor do I question in the least that there are thou- 
sands of office-holders throughout the land, whose 
manhood is still untarnished by the debasing methods 
of party-politics. Such men, however, would them- 
selves confess that they have had a hard road to travel, 
and that it would give them the greatest relief imagin- 
able to be assured, that henceforth their continuance 
in place will depend solely upon their own merits, 
and not upon the good pleasure of their patron Sena- 
tor, or of the Representative of their district ; or, worse 
still, upon the favor of some local politician and party 
manager. , 

XII. 

POLITICS AS A TRADE. 

Having noticed the machinery and agencies of the 
spoils system, I will now point out some of the spe- 
cific evils of which it is the direct cause, or which 
are greatly increased and intensified by its influence. 
And the first is, that it makes politics a trade. 
Public service, in a free country, is certainly one of 
the noblest spheres of human exertion. It is a sphere 
of the highest earthly duties, and as such is entitled 
to the best talents and the self-devotion of the best 
men. But the instant office is sought, or bestowed, 
or used for mere pecuniary considerations, th^ instant 
it becomes a matter of sale and purchase, its charac- 
ter is gone ; from one of the highest it is degraded 



44 TRADING IN OFFICE. 

to one of the lowest and most ignoble spheres of 
human exertion ; all who have to do with it receive 
an evil taint. Trading in office is really one of the 
worst kinds of political immorality. A great outcry 
was raised — and very justly — against those managers 
of the Cr6dit Mobilier who distributed its shares 
among members of Congress where they " would do 
the most good." Public opinion was naturally shocked 
at the attempt to secure favorable legislation by such 
means. And yet, in point of fact, the spoils system 
is a Credit Mobilier of another sort, on a vastly larger 
scale, and a hundred times more debasing. It is, 
from first to last, a scheme of bargain and sale. Offices 
are distributed where they " will do the most good " 
in the way of carrying out the ambitious and selfish 
purposes of party leaders. It is, in effect, bribery on 
the one hand and venality on the other. Place is 
bestowed and accepted with the tacit, if not express, 
understanding that it is to be paid for, sometimes in 
so much money, but if not in money, yet in votes, in 
influence, and in active, entire subserviency to the 
behests of the patron. 

The custom of regularly assessing the Government 
employes in the departments at Washington and all 
over the country, in order to raise funds for election- 
eering purposes, is a striking case in point. The ex- 
tent to which the custom was formerly carried, its 
harsh, inquisitorial character, and the large amounts 
secured by it, are almost incredible. It is said that 
this practice has been so far modified as to make the 
contribution voluntary, instead of exacting it on peril 
of loss of place. But there are many ways of effacing 
the distinction between the voluntary and the involun- 



LOBB YING. 45 

tary, and the party whips and pimps know them well. 
Then so far as votes, influence, and active exertion 
are concerned, these are still demanded, and are often 
far more valuable than money. It is one of his many 
claims to popular respect and good-will that in the 
late national election Mr. James, the Postmaster of 
this city, refused to allow his subordinates to be used 
even as United States deputy marshals. This is itself 
the sign of a great change going on in public senti- 
ment in reference to this matter. 

It would require a volume to point out in detail 
the various methods and tricks of politics as a trade. 
One of the most noted is what is called lobbying. 
For years votes necessary to pass certain bills through 
the Legislature of New York were bought up by our 
late master, Mr. Tweed, and his emissaries, with as 
little ado as if they had been so many pieces of dam- 
aged dry-goods offered for sale ; and votes needed to 
defeat all bills which Mr. Tweed deemed hostile *to 
his interests, were purchased with the same cool 
effrontery. If all the lobbying secrets of the Capitol 
at Albany, and of the City Hall and party wire-pull- 
ers of this town, both Republican and Democratic, 
during the past ten years, were to be fully revealed, 
they would, no doubt, " a tale unfold " at which the 
honest men of both parties would stand aghast. I 
suppose the records of municipal or political crime, 
robbeiy, and rascality, during the same period the 
world over, even in the " effete monarchies " of Eu- 
rope, would afford nothing to be compared with it. 
Had their just deserts been awarded to the ring-lead- 
ers of this gigantic conspiracy and treason against 
the majesty of law and the moral life of society, they 



46 "^f^E TWEED REGIME. 

would all of them, years ago, have been breaking 
stones in the State's prison. And yet to this day 
public opinion is more or less hoodwinked, and the 
public conscience perplexed, or half-paralyzed, by the 
skill with which some of them have covered up their 
tracks, and even the worst of them put on the airs 
of injured innocence, or, through their lawyers, de- 
nied and fought desperately against the truth ! 

What a beautiful lesson of public spirit and fidelity 
to public trusts this matchless villainy taught, and is 
still teaching, our aspiring young men ! In the days 
of its triumph, when it flourished like a green bay- 
tree, it seemed to say to them, in answer to the question 
propounded long ago by Jonathan Wild : " Can any 
man doubt whether it is better to be a great states- 
man or a common thief?" Perhaps not ; but if one 
can be botli together, is not that better still ? And 
now in the days of its sere and yellow leaf, it teaches 
them, that even if a great ' statesman ' is so unfortunate 
as to become a common thief, there is a fair chance 
of his coming off in the end, if not with flying colors, 
yet with his head safe upon his shoulders, enough 
plunder left to keep him from starving, and plenty 
of old friends and comrades who still speak kindly 
of him, and are in mortal terror lest he should speak 
unkindly and tell what he knows of them ! 

But the Tweed regime was only an exceptionally 
vile and enormous misgrowth. The same cancerous 
taint is still in our political system, and may, at any 
time, break out again, both at Albany and in this city. 
Unless the people themselves take the matter in hand 
and cure it, so far as it is curable, by stringent con- 
stitutional provisions, as well as by law and public 



BRIBER Y IN ELECTION OF U. S. SENA TORS. 47 

opinion, there is no security against a constant recur- 
rence of the evil. None of the old crooked methods 
have passed out of existence ; and there are still 
plenty of the old offenders in office or actively en- 
gaged in politics, to teach the uninitiated how to use 
them. The tongues of these veterans in the art 
of deceiving and cheating the people, do not yet 
cleave to the roof of their mouth — would they 
might ! — nor has their right hand forgotten its cun- 
ning; nor is their wondrous power of catching the 
scent of a " corruption fund," or their delight in 
handling it, abated in the least. 

Reference has already been made to the national 
scandal growing out of the Credit Mobilier. Lobby- 
ing, not only at Washington, but all over the country, 
has become a deep political art, and they who have 
learned it thoroughly and can use it with skill, are 
men in urgent request ; for the power of securing 
votes, whether by the use of money or in other wrong 
ways — and that is what lobbying, properly so-called, 
means — is a power behind the throne ; it is a power 
to vfield pro tanto the legislative will of the nation. 

To what extent this corrupt method is sometimes 
employed in the election of United States Senators I 
need not say. In a conversation, some years ago, with 
the late William Curtis Noyes, a man of great abilities 
and of high Christian character, he gave me a graphic 
account of the scenes he had just witnessed at Albany 
in connection with the choice of a Senator from this 
State. He himself was a candidate for the place ; 
but on finding that, aside from all other considera- 
tions, a very large sum of purchase-money was indis- 
pensable to his success, he at once abandoned the 



48 DEMAGOGUES AND SPOILS. 

field and came home profoundly shocked and sad- 
dened by the discovery — saddened, I feel sure, not 
chiefly by any personal disappointment, but by the 
painful reflections which it had awakened in his pat- 
riotic and thoughtful mind. 

The late Presidential election, both before and after 
the close of the popular canvass, would afford, it is to 
be feared, very mortifying illustrations of the power 
and crooked ways of the trading element in politics; 
and that not merely or chiefly in the disgraceful bet- 
ting "pools" of this city, but in downright bargain 
and sale, in wholesale bribery or attempted bribery. 
But here is not the place to discuss this matter. 

I am far from asserting that all these evils come of 
the spoils system ; but certainly they are largely its 
effect, and in every case are increased and intensified 
by it. 

XIII. 

DEMAGOGUES AND THE SPOILS. 

Closely connected with the tendency of the spoils 
system to debase politics to a mere trade, is its ten- 
dency to engender and nourish demagogues. " Pat- 
ronage " — to use an illustration of my brother — 
" patronage is waved, like a huge magnet, over the 
land ; and demagogues, like iron filings, attracted by 
a law of their nature, gather and cluster around its 
poles." It is noteworthy how many of our most im- 
portant political terms, both good and bad, we owe to 
the Greeks, c. g., monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, de- 
mocracy, polity, politics, demagogue. All the funda- 
mental ideas of the social system, indeed, are found 
in the history and language of that wonderful people. 



PORTRAIT OF THE DEMAGOGUE. 49 

And in the "Politics" of Aristotle these ideas are 
analyzed and expounded with matchless skill. It 
would be a fortunate thing if this invaluable work 
could be studied in all our colleges, as a text-book on 
the philosophy of government and the right method 
of political thought. It is full of suggestive hints 
to an American citizen. It were not easy to say 
whether the amazing genius of the great Stagyrite 
shows itself with most power in his writings upon the 
phenomena of nature or the phenomena of society. 
He was doubtless one of the profoundest political 
observers that ever lived. His genesis and portrait- 
ure of the demagogue is admirable. He defines the 
sophist as one who deals in seeming, but not real 
wisdom ; and so the demagogue is a seeming, but not 
real patriot — that is, loyal, devoted servant of his 
country. Let me cite a passage bearing on this sub- 
ject. Having described genuine democracy and its 
characteristic features, he thus proceeds : 

" Another kind of democracy is where, other things being the 
same, the multitude, and not the law, bears sway. This comes 
to pass when instead of the law the mere resolves of the popu- 
lar assembly are sovereign ; and this is the work of the dema- 
gogues ; for popular governments in which the constitution and 
laws are supreme, afford no place for demagogues ; but the best 
citizens are there in authority (literally, in the presidency^ Where, 
however, the laws are not sovereign, demagogues spring up. In 
such a government the people are a sort of many-headed monarch ; 
for the many rule not as each, but as all Now such a peo- 
ple, being in truth a monarch, will of course play the king ; and 
inasmuch as it is controlled by no law, readily becomes despotic. 
Hence flatterers are in honor. A democracy of this description 
bears the same analogy to a popular government based upon the 
supremacy of law, that a tyranny bears to the legitimate forms 
of monarchy. In both, the animus or real character is the same ; 



50 PASSAGE FROM ARISTOTLE. 

both exercise despotism over the better class of citizens ; and the 
resolves of mass meetings are in the one what edicts and decrees 
are in the other. 

" The demagogue, too, and the flatterer of the tyrant bear the 
closest analogy. They are, indeed, at heart the same ; and these 
have the principal power, each in their respective forms of gov- 
ernment ; court favorites with the absolute monarch, and dema- 
gogues with a people such as I have described. The demagogues 
are, in fact, the guilty authors of this degeneracy of popular gov- 
ernment, by relerring everything to the mere pleasure of the peo- 
ple, without respect to law or right. Thus they aggrandize 
themselves and become mighty ; by ruling the popular opinion 
they rule the state ; for the multitude obeys them ! If they wish 
to overthrow an upright magistrate they accuse him, not before 
the law, but before the people, which, they say, ought to be his 
judge ; the people, well pleased, entertain the wrongful proposal, 
and thus all just authority is dissolved. He who should blame us 
for calling such a democracy a state or republic, would certainly 
not censure without reason ; for where the laws do not govern, 
there is no true state."* 

At how many points in our history has this spuri- 
ous democracy, with its attendant flatterers of the 
people, manifested itself? And the spoils system, 
while not the primary cause of demagogues, is a hot- 
bed for growing them. They existed in the times of 
Washington, and did what they could to embarrass 
his administration, thwart his patriotic designs, and 
by their malignant assaults and calumnies, embitter 
the closing years of his public life. The}' will always 
exist in a free country. But nothing more tends to 
multiply their number and power than a civil service 
like ours, which virtually puts the immense patronage 
of the Government into the hands of members of 
Congress and local managers, to be dispensed by 



* PoUtic!,. Book IV, chap. IV. 



THE WORK OF THE DEMAGOGUES. 



51 



them for the purpose of carrying out personal and 
party schemes, and of satisfying personal and party 
claims. Demagogues are as naturally bred under 
such a system, as weeds in a garden richly manured 
and abandoned of all culture. And whatever tends 
to multiply this vile, unscrupulous class — this tail of 
the nation — tends to the corruption and ruin of the 
state. There is no deadlier enemy of liberty than 
demagogism. Nor is there any deadlier enemy of 
law and order, or of social tranquility. All the ele- 
ments of political mischief are combined in it. Ly- 
ing and deception, malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and 
evil speakings, audacious impudence, incendiary ap- 
peals to the ignorance, passions, and prejudices of 
the people — these are the stock in trade of the dema- 
gogue. When ambitious men, especially if they be 
eminent leaders of party and the people, get tainted 
with this poison and deliberately play the dema- 
gogue — as sometimes happens — the peace and pros- 
perity of a generation may be sacrificed. The annals 
of freedom afford sad proof of this. How many of 
the disasters that, of late years, have been crushing 
out the Republican party in the South, are directly 
traceable to this cause ! With some very honorable 
exceptions, the " carpet-bag " regime — at least in a 
number of States — appears to have been little better 
than a grasping oligarchy of native and imported 
demagogues. 

One of the most disgusting phenomena of our po- 
litical life is the prevalence of a spirit of turbulent, 
menacing brag and bluster. This, too, is the work 
of the demagogues. In times of general agitation 
and excitement, when the waves of party feeling run 



5 2 REP UDIA TION. 

high, they seize upon these weapons for the express 
purpose of intimidating and subduing pubHc opinion. 
How skillfully they were employed to this end before 
and after the Presidential election of i860 ! The same 
method has been tried very widely since the recent 
Presidential election — with what result remains to 
be seen. It is the old method of the demagogue. 
The beginning of the luords of his mouth is foolish- 
ness, and the end of his talk mischievous madness. 
(Eccles. X. 13). 

XIV. 

DEMAGOGUES AND REPUDIATION. 

One of the darkest blots upon the good name of 
our country is repudiation ; and this has been invari- 
ably the work of demagogues. Let me illustrate the 
point by quoting a passage from my brother, at whose 
feet, more than a third of a century ago, I took my 
first lessons in civil service reform. He was a man 
whose patriotic ardor, high sense of public duty, and 
hatred of demagogues exceeded, if possible, even his 
wonderful eloquence. The passage occurs in a letter 
to the illustrious poet of Rydal Mount. Mr. Words- 
worth's only daughter and other near relatives held a 
considerable amount of the so-called Planter's Bank 
bonds. The letter is dated February 5, 1843, ^"^ 
was designed to explain the causes of repudiation, to 
declare the writer's belief in the ultimate payment of 
the bonds in question, and " to relieve at least a 
portion of his countrymen from the imputation of 
intentional dishonesty in the eyes of a poet and phi- 



S. S. FUENTISS TO WORDSWORTH. 



53 



losopher, whose good opinion was capable of adding 
weight even to the character of a nation : " 

" The bonds in which you are interested, I perceive by a 
memorandum of my brother's, belong to the class that has not 
been repudiated. Their validity is acknowledged on all hands ; 
nor has any pretence ever been set up of illegality or irregularity 
— either in their inception or sale. I have no doubt of the ulti- 
mate payment of these bonds, both principal and interest ; and 
in this opinion I am sustained by all intelligent men in the coun- 
try. I would, therefore, advise the holders of this class of Mis- 
sissippi bonds to avoid sacrificing them. 

" The doctrine of repudiation has had a momentary and appa- 
rent triurnph in this State ; but its success was accidental 

It is my deliberate opinion that four-fifths of the people of Mis- 
sissippi utterly abhor repudiation, and look upon its supporters 
as the advocates of fraud and dishonesty. But you will perhaps 
say this opinion is paradoxical ; your Legislature, under your 
form of government, is chosen by the people, and expresses their 
will. This Legislature has, by a deliberate act, repudiated a por- 
tion, at least, of the public obligations. This act is the act of 
the people. How, then, can it be said that four-fifths are op- 
posed to what all have done ? I admit the force of the question, 
and the apparently anomalous character of my proposition ; still 
it is correct. I know it to be so from my own observation ; and 
in this case it has happened — as it does frequently in others — 
that a measure may be carried in the legislative body, at variance 
with the wishes and opinions of four-fifths of the electors. Iii 
the present instance, repudiation resulted out of a contest be- 
tween two political parties, though it formed no element of either. 
These two parties were very equally divided, and a slight influ- 
ence was sufficient to give to either the preponderance. At this 
junctiire, a few recktess and profligate demagogues, observing 
the embarrassed and distressed state of the country, which was 
then at its height, seized upon the idea of repudiating the public 
debt, and threzu it, as make-weight, into their own side of the 
political scales. A few persons, for the most part among the 
ignorant and credulous, alarmed at the thought of increased 
taxation, which tlie demagogies told them would consume all 



54 MISSISSIPPI REPUDIA TION. 

their substance, and excited by artful appeals to their prejudices, 
and bold assertions of fraud on the part 6f the purchasers of the 
public bonds, were led away by this dishonest doctrine, and thus 
enabled their false leaders to succeed in placing their party in 
power.* 

" Thus the repudiators, though but a small body, and wholly 
incapable as a party by themselves, have been able, by holding 
the balance of power between the two great and legitimate par- 
ties of the State, to foist themselves into temporary importance 
and apparent success. But those who made use of them are 
already ashamed of their infamous allies." 

Unfortunatel)', my brother was entirely mistaken 
in his confidence. Mississippi repudiation was a new 
thing in the land ; and with all his political sagacity, 
he had fully divined neither the virulence of the dis- 



* A brief editorial of the Vicksbitrg Sentine!, of November 7, 
1843, will show the sort of argument and appeal here referred to, 
and at the same time exhibit the characteristic and invariable 
temper of the demagogue : 

" The Work Goes Bravely On. — Far as we can see, the g.tllant Subterraneans 
arc (ioiiif; their duty manfully and well ! The battle will be well fought, and if 
the enemy gain the victory, it will be well earned and hard won. 

" Stand up to the racks to-day, boys ! Let those who did not vote yesterday, 
come forward and do so to-day ; and let those who have voted, and who love the 
cause, aid in bringing up our corps of reserve to the charge. On, Anti-bondsmen, 
on ! Old Warren, and the City of the Hills, must be rescued ! Your birthrights, 
and those of your children, are at stake ; if you are men — if you cherish the great 
fundamental principle which your fathers proclaimed July 4, '76— if you wish to 
give the dcalh-blow to funding and consequent taxation throughout the world — 
if you have humanity enough not to increase the pangs of starvation under which 
three-fourths of your fellow-beings in bond and king-ridden Europe arc writhing-- 
go, we say, to the polls to-day and record your vote against the iniquitous system. 
The present crisis is no ordinary one ; the issue is not confined to Mississippi — no, 
it is a contest in which is marshalled, on one side, a prh'i/egrd aristocracy, mon- 
eyed itijiui'iice, bonds, and endless taxation ; and, on the other. Freedom, Justice, 
and Humanity ! One rally, one charge, and the victory which is now in sight 
will be ours !" 

How long the writer of this patriotic effusion had been in the 
United States, I do not know. He was an impulsive, warm- 
hearted Irishman, and was soon after killed in a duel. 



A LESSON FOR TO-DA Y. 



55 



ease, whether in its acute or chronic form, nor the 
tendency of demagogism of this sort to leaven the 
whole lump of a party, that has once tampered with 
it and obtained power through its influence. " In mat- 
ters of this sort (Mr. Wordsworth replied) time, as in 
the case of my relatives, is of infinite importance, and 
it is to be feared that the two individuals, for whose 
comfort payment is of the most consequence, may 
both be in their graves before it comes. They are 
advanced in life and one has a large family; and 
both, owing to various misfortunes, are in very nar- 
row circumstances. Let but taxes, in amount how- 
ever small, once be imposed exclusively for discharg- 
ing these obligations, and that measure would be 
hailed as the dawn of a coming day ; but until that 
is effected, the most sanguine must be subject to fits 
of despondency." 

More than ten years later, two or three years after 
the death of both my brother and Mr. Wordsworth, 
the legal and constitutional validity of the repudiated 
" Union Bank " bonds, as they were called, was 
unanimously affirmed by the High Court of Errors 
and Appeals ; but both the principal and interest of 
these bonds, as well as those of the Planter's Bank, 
remain unpaid to this day. 

I have dwelt somewhat upon this case, partly be- 
cause it is such an instructive comment upon the sub- 
ject in hand ; and in part, I confess, because it touches 
a momentous question of the hour — a question vitally 
connected with the financial and moral character of 
many States of the Union, and hardly less with our 
national honor and the future of American civiliza- 
tion. 



56 CORRUPTION OF THE BALLOT-BOX. 

XV. 
SPOILS AND THE BALLOT-BOX. 

It is now admitted by all patriotic and thoughtful 
citizens, that one of the greatest perils to constitu- 
tional liberty in this country, grows out of the abuse 
and prostitution of the elective franchise. But what 
is the cause and motive of this terrible crime against 
the Republic ? In order to answer this question 
aright, we must especially consider two things, viz. : 
the inevitable effect of Executive, or rather Congres- 
sional, patronage as now described, and then the in- 
fluence of unscrupulous politicians and wire-pullers. 
The first is to stimulate the passion for office to such 
a degree as to render its subjects willing to use fraud 
and force, or to connive at the use of fraud and force, 
for the purpose of defeating an honest vote and an 
honest count. The second furnishes the appropriate 
agency for carrying out the conspiracy. It is simply 
impossible, by any exercise of mere influence, or 
moral suasion, or public opinion even, to keep the 
ballot-box pure under the enormous temptations and 
pressure of the spoils system. One might almost as 
well try by such means to stop the spread of small- 
pox or cholera — for the poison is in the political at- 
mosphere — and it is well-nigh as difficult a task to 
stop the contagion by mere legal expedients. Those 
who profit by the abuse will spare no effort by 
bribery, the partisan press, the party-whip, and simi- 
lar means, to prevent the passage of stringent laws 
on the subject ; or if such laws are passed, to evade 
their grasp. 



METHODS OF DEFEATING THE POPULAR WILL. 57 

When the prize is so great, nothing will be allowed 
to stand in the way of seizing it. There are various 
methods of defeating the popular will as expressed in 
the will of the majority, and any one, or all, of these 
methods will, if possible, be used with equal unscrupu- 
lousness; e.g., false naturalization, illegal registration, 
no registration, repeating, perjury, forgery, ballot-box 
stuffing, bribery, intimidation, deceptive tricks upon 
the ignorance or credulity of voters, and a dishonest 
count. In our great cities especially, where the vot- 
ing population is massed in large numbers, where the 
voters do not know each other, where the dangerous 
classes of society — who haunt the dram-shop, the 
gambling hell, and the den of infamy — are not only 
in full force, but at many polls cast the majority of 
ballots, and where are to be found the most skillful 
and reckless party managers, well supplied with the 
sinews of war, it is evident that the facilities for cor- 
rupting the ballot-box by all these methods are most 
abundant. And then special audacity is here infused 
into schemes of fraud by the fact that in so many 
cases the vote of the great city may overcome the 
vote of the country, and so determine not only the 
local result, but the result, also, in the whole State, 
if not in the nation. It is enough to refer, in the 
way of illustration, to the vote of New York City 
and Brooklyn in 18^8 and 1876. 

It seems to me, therefore, extremely difficult, if 
not impossible, to maintain the purity of the ballot- 
box in large portions of our country, by any mere 
legislative safeguards, so long as the spoils system con- 
tinues to operate. But once abolish that system by 
a wise and effective reform, which shall put the civil 



58 ONL Y WA V OF DELIVERANCE. 

service on the same foundation of honesty, capacity, 
and fideHty upon which it stood under all the earlier 
Presidents, on substantially the same foundation as 
our admirable military and naval service ; once elim- 
inate from our elections the abnormal and corrupting 
influence of the Federal patronage as now wielded ; 
once blow off in this way the steam of boiling pas- 
sion which rages so madly in the midst of a Presi- 
dential canvass, threatening to burst and shatter into 
a thousand fragments the constitutional machinery 
of the Government ; once, I say, withdraw this alien, 
malign, but terrible force from our elections, and the 
effect would be like magic in divesting them of a 
large part of their violence, and helping to make 
them what they ought and were intended to be, a 
calm, deliberate expression of the will of the people 
and the public reason. 

Could the disturbing influence, which the fears of 
the great army of office-holders and the hopes of the 
thirty-fold greater army of office-seekers have brought, 
and still bring, to bear upon the existing national cri- 
sis, be suddenly removed from both scales, the diffi- 
culty in the way of a peaceful and satisfactory set- 
tlement of the controversy would be immeasurably 
diminished. What more than anything else inten- 
sifies and envenoms all the angry passions incident 
to the political situation, is the mass of purely selfish 
and partisan interests involved in the issue. To the 
overwhelming majority of the American people, of 
both parties, the only interest involved is one of law 
and good government ; and this is fitted to calm 
the public mind, not to excite it to violence and 
wrath. 



THE GOOD OF PARTY. 59 

XVI. 

SPOILS AND PARTY SPIRIT. 

I have shown how the spoils system tends to pro- 
duce and increase political abuses, being itself a mon- 
strous abuse. Let me now speak of its tendency to 
aggravate all the bad effects of the spirit of party. 
The influence of parties forms one of the most inter- 
esting as well as instructive chapters in the philosophy 
of society. Alike in the civil, the religious, and the 
literary spheres it is a controlling force. No organi- 
zation, however despotic, can entirely repress it. At 
first there was an opposing party in the Vatican 
Council, and the whole strength and resolution of the 
Papal power was required to stifle its voice in the 
final vote. The existence of parties is, in fact, a 
necessary condition of social freedom and progress. 
All great questions of human thought and action 
have more than one side, and where opinion is un- 
trammeled, different views respecting them are sure 
to be taken. The history of the Christian church 
and doctrine, the history of philosophy, the history 
of morals, are full of instances ; and so is the history 
of government. How otherwise could vital problems 
of civil right and duty or of public policy be fairly 
settled ? The constitutional history of England is 
largely a history of party struggles, and the history 
of party struggles in the United States is only an- 
other name for that of the political progress of the 
country. An enlightened opposition is hardly less 
essential to liberty than a wise and just adminis- 
tration. 



Co THE EVIL OF PARTY. 

And yet precisely here is a point of the utmost 
danger to popular institutions. The spirit of party 
is always prone to excess. Its natural impulse is to 
blind, unreasoning obstinacy and violence. In times 
of public trouble and excitement it easily degenerates 
into the spirit of faction and sedition. And that is 
one of the worst evils that can assail a republican 
government. When the spirit of faction or sedition 
seizes upon and wields at pleasure the organized 
forces of a great party, its power of political mischief 
is appalling. Some of the heaviest calamities that 
have ever befallen human society, arose in this way. 
The framers of the Constitution were well aware of 
this fact, and kept it ever in view while constructing 
the new political edifice. They strove to lay its 
foundations so deep in principles of order, justice, 
and domestic tranquillity, and to build it up in such 
moral strength, that it could never be " overwhelmed 
by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage." 
One of their main arguments in favor of the more 
perfect union was " its tendency to break and control 
the violence of faction." And on no point is the 
warning voice of the Father of his Country, in his 
Farewell Address, louder or more impressive than 
on this. Let me quote a few sentences from this in- 
comparable legacy of patriotic wisdom and affection : 

" The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpw 
ened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which 
in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid 
enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length 
to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and 
miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek 
security and repose in the absolute power of an individual ; and 
sooner or later, the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or 



WASHINGTON'S WARNING. 6l 

more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to 
the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. 
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which, 
nevertheless, ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common 
and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to 
make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and 
restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and 
enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community 
with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms ; kindles the animos- 
ity of one part against another ; foments occasionally riot and 
insurrection There is an opinion that parties in free coun- 
tries are useful checks upon the administration of government, 
and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain 
limits, is probably true ; and in governments of a monarchical 
cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon 
the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in 
governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. 
From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be 
enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there 
being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force 
of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be 
quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting 
into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume." 

Had Washington foreseen the rapid development, 
vast expansion, and overshadowing influence of Fed- 
eral patronage ; had he foreseen the enormous, deep- 
rooted system of political abuse and corruption that, 
within less than half a century, would grow up and 
become identified with it ; had he, at the same time, 
foreseen how all tjie evils of party spirit which he so 
much dreaded — its factious, vindictive, tyrannical, and 
incendiary passions — would be thereby increased and 
intensified seven-fold — I am sure his great heart, so 
full of love and solicitude for his country, would have 
been smitten with deep prophetic grief, and even been 
tempted almost to despair of the Republic ! Let all 



62 PUBLIC SPIRIT. 

who arc trying to find out and apply a remedy for 
the evil, be thankful that they have Washington's 
own practice, his inestimable counsels, and the exam- 
ple of his unwearied, patient, self-sacrificing patriotism 
to guide, as well as cheer, them on their difficult way. 



XVII. 

PUBLIC SPIRIT. 

If the spirit of party is prone to constant excess, 
true public spirit, on the other hand, is liable to no 
such perversion. There can not be too much of it, 
any more than there can be too much pure air, or 
too much well-being. It is in itself a substantial, 
unmixed blessing ; for it seeks not its own, but the 
general good. Mere party spirit, at the best, is little 
more than its shadow ; at the worst, is a miserable 
counterfeit and mockery of it. Without something 
of this better, conservative element, party, however 
loud-tongued and though strong enough to remove 
mountains, is only another name for selfish faction. 
But genuine public spirit, like gospel charity, suffer- 
eth long and is kind ; envieth not ; vaunteth not 
itself; is not puffed up; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth 
in the truth; beareth all things; hopeth all things; 
endureth all things. It is the perennial spring of 
liberty, of intellectual progress, and of all generous, 
noble deeds. It is the vital stuff out of which have 
been fashioned, and are fashioned still, the great 
founders, heroes, reformers, martyrs, sages, law-givers, 
and leaders of the race. Without it human society 



CAUSES REPRESSIVE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT. 63 

would be a moral desolation ; for where there is no 
public spirit, even the fairest personal and domestic 
virtues suffer an eclipse. 

A free people, therefore, can not take too much 
pains to remove, as far as possible, all causes that 
tend, directly or indirectly, to repress and stifle pub- 
lic spirit. But the present system of Federal patron- 
age is singularly adapted to produce this evil result ; 
and that in two principal ways. 

First, by substituting for public spirit mere partisan 
zeal and greed. In this respect its operation is not 
unlike that of purely worldly motives in the sphere 
of religion ; they tend to vitiate true piety, and put 
in its place mere outward profession and sectarian, 
or theological, passion and bigotry. Just in the de- 
gree that men are governed in the service of God by 
these influences, just in that degree is the Christian 
spirit extinguished. So in the sphere of civil life 
and duty, motives that have the spoils for their ob- 
ject are essentially hostile to those which aim at 
the general good. The one class can not gain the as- 
cendency without subduing and driving out the other 
class. No man can serve tzvo masters; for either he will 
hate the one and love the other ; or else he will hold to 
the one and despise the other. A thorough-going, fa- 
natical partisan can not be a wise and useful citizen. 
And while there -are various party agencies whereby 
the spoils system enfeebles and debases public spirit, 
one is preeminently effective — I mean the subsidized 
party press. I need not stop to show what a mighty 
and shaping power in and upon our times, the daily 
newspaper has become. It is a ruling estate, alike 
in the realm of opinion and of civil and social life. 



64 A SUBSIDIZED PRESS. 

Its services to the cause of humanity, to civilization, 
and to the general happiness, as well as intelligence, 
are inestimable. But when degraded into a servile 
instrument of party prejudice and tyranny — especially 
when it becomes the paid ' organ ' of some ambitious 
politician, or office-holder, or ring — it acts upon the 
sentiments of public duty and justice with blighting 
effect. And one of the earliest and bitterest fruits 
of the spoils system was thus to subsidize and shackle 
the press. Mr. Webster, more than forty years ago, 
put his strong finger upon this sore spot. After de- 
picting the office and blessings of a free press, he 
proceeds thus : 

" Is a press that is purchased or pensioned more free than a 
press that is fettered ? Can the people look for truths to partial 
sources, whether rendered partial through fear or through favor ? 
Is dependence on the Government for bread no temptation to 
screen its abuses ? Is the truth in no danger, is the watchman 
under no temptation when he can neither proclaim the approach 
of national evils, nor seem to descry them, without the loss of his 
place ? Mr. President, an open attempt to secure the aid and 
friendship of the public press, by bestowing the emoluments of 
office on its active conductors, seems to me, of everything we 
have witnessed, to be the most reprehensible. It degrades both 
the government and the press. As far as its natural effect ex- 
tends, it turns the palladium of liberty into an engfine of party. 
It brings the agency, activity, energy, and patronage of govern- 
ment, all to bear with united force, on the means of general 
intelligence, and on the adoption or rejection of political opinions. 
It so completely perverts the true object of government, it so 
entirely revolutionizes our whole system, that the chief business 
of those in power is directed rather to the propagation of opin- 
ions favorable to themselves, than to the execution of the laws. 
This propagation of opinions, through the press, becomes the 
main administrative duty. Some fifty or sixty editors of leading 
journals have been appointed to office by the present Executive." 



DISGUST AS A POLITICAL FORCE. 6$ 

After speaking again of a pure and independent 
press in terms of the highest admiration, and disclaim- 
ing all thought of excluding an editor simply as such 
from office, if he is the fittest man, Mr. Webster goes 
on to say : 

" The ground of complaint is, that the aiding, by the press, of 
the election of an individual, is rewarded by that same individual 
with the gift of moneyed oflfices. Men are turned out of office, 
and others put in, and receive salaries from the public treasury, 
on the ground, either openly avowed or falsely denied, that they 
have rendered service in the election of the very individual who 
makes this removal and makes this appointment. Every man, 
sir, must see that this is a vital stab at the purity of the press. 
It not only assails its independence by addressing sinister motives 
to it, but it furnishes from the public treasury the means of ex- 
citing these motives." * 

That public spirit, then, so essential to republican 
liberty, and the source of its greatest strength and 
beauty, sickens and dies out under the withering in- 
fluence of corrupt patronage. It is supplanted by the 
self-seeking spirit of party. 

But this is not all. Another sentiment is engen- 
dered of the spoils, hardly less destructive of public 
spirit than the most reckless partisan zeal ; I mean 
the sentiment of moral repugnance and aversion. 
An interesting essay might be written on Disgust as 
a political force. It is, undoubtedly, the real secret 
of not a little of the apathy with which so many good 
men regard their civil duty and the affairs of govern- 
ment. They have become nauseated by the corrupt 
and outrageous methods of party politics. They 
have learned to despise the unscrupulous politican 



* Speech at Worcester, October is, 1832. 



66 POLITICAL SCF.PTLCISM. 

and wire-puller as they despise the heartless men who 
get up and manipulate swindling railroads and rotten 
life-insurance concerns, for the purpose of cozening 
and fleecing the innocent public. They loathe a 
blustering demagogue as they do a sneak-thief or an 
'abortionist. Worse still, they have lost all patience 
with parties, and all faith in them as trustworthy 
guardians or organs of liberty and the general good. 

" A plague o' both your houses ! " 

they cry out. They even begin to doubt the capac- 
ity of the people themselves for honest and wise self- 
government. What, after all, is our boasted self- 
government (they say) but the rule of an oligarchy 
of politicians and office-holders? Why, then, in def- 
erence to an effete 4th of July superstition, should 
we cherish still the creed of a free representative re- 
public, when it is plain as day that the actual system 
under which we groan is that of a mere democracy 
of numbers, at once servile and despotic ; — despotic 
toward opposing or independent thought and the 
rights of the minority, but utterly slavish in its sub- 
jection to party opinion and the party-whip. Look, 
for example, at the working of " free institutions " 
in the city of New York for the last ten years, and 
then tell us if, on the whole, anything in the shape 
of government meaner, more extortionate, less worthy 
of respect, better fitted to excite mingled shame, con- 
tempt, and indignations-exists, or has existed, during 
the century, in any city of Christendom, unless in 
times of war, mob-violence, or revolution ? And why 
should we lie to our own consciences and to the 
world, by giving to such a scandalous caricature and 



HATRED OF EVIL-.DOERS. 6/ 

prostitution of righteous authority and administra- 
tion, the honored name of republican liberty? 

Comparatively few, to be sure, speak out so plainly ; 
but thousands say these things in their hearts. And 
such feelings are perfectly natural ; to a certain ex- 
tent, they are, also, right and salutary. Nature has 
planted them deep in the human breast. Moral re- 
pugnance and aversion are the necessary counterpart 
of heartfelt approval and affection. It is a mark of 
true virtue, says Aristotle, to love things lovable, 
and to hate the things that ought to be hated. Do 
not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee ? and am 
not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee ? I 
hate thejn with perfect hatred ; I count thetn my 
enemies. 

But whatever may be said in defense of the dis- 
gust and indignation, I do not justify either the 
apathy or the scepticism. I hold both to be alike 
wrong. We are bound to do our duty as American 
citizens in the face of any odds or any discourage- 
ments ; and we ought never to despair of the Re- 
public. 

For every gilt of noble origin 

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath. 

But, on the other hand, it is foolish to shut our 
eyes to the fact that a sentiment of profound disgust 
and alienation in reference to public affairs, is wide- 
spread through the community; that such a sentiment, 
when it takes the form of apathy and unbelief, is ex- 
ceedingly injurious to the vital interests of American 
society ; and that the whole tendency of the system, 
which substitutes party and the spoils in place of 



63 EFFECT OF REGARDING POLrTICS A S A GAME. 

country, as the central motive:^ of political opinion 
and action, and of the administration of office — is to 
produce and strengthen this sentiment. 

" When it comes to be once understiwd (says Mr. Calhoun) that 
politics is a game ; that those who arc engaged in it but act a 
part ; that they make this or that profession, not from an honest 
conviction or an intent to fulfill them, but as the means of delud- 
ing the people, and through that delusion to acquire power, 
when such professions are to be entirely forgotten — the people 
will lose all confidence in public men ; all will be regarded as 
mere jugglers — the honest and the patriotic :is well as the cun- 
ning and the profligate ; and the people will become indifferent 
and passive to the grossest abuses of power, on the ground that 
those whom they may elevate under whatever pledges, instead of 
reforming, will but imitate the example of those whom they here 
expelled." 

If, then, we would see a genuine, self-sacrificing, 
magnanimous public spirit animating all classes — par- 
ticularly, the more cultivated and influential classes — 
we should make haste to put down a system which is 
in such deadly antagonism to this spirit. 



XVIII. 

PUBLIC LIFE AND STEWARDSHIP. 

It is a frequent as well as just complaint that so 
many able men, admirably fitted to dignify and adorn 
public life, either refuse to enter it, or, as is more apt 
to be the case, are virtually banished from it. The 
consequence is that a deplorably large number of im- 
portant positions arc filled by inferior men, who com- 
mand respect neither for capacity or for character. 



MEAN TYPE OF PUBLIC MEiY. gg 

They are not merely without any true intellectual 
and moral culture, but not a few of them are utterly 
vulgar in their tastes and habits. That they hold 
their places in trust, and are bound by every consider- 
ation of honor and duty to seek not their own profit, 
but the good of the community, in every measure 
they advocate, and in every vote they give — this is a 
thought of which they seem wholly incapable. They 
are the pest of wise rule and authority. They are 
the natural enemies as well as the opprobrium of 
good government. What a mass of pure, unmitigated 
selfishness — and selfishness in some of its lowest and 
worst forms — is through them concentrated and busily 
at work in our halls of legislation ! Under any system 
there will be a great deal too much of this. No prin- 
ciple of natural selection, or of popular election, will 
ever so elevate and purify civil life as to keep out of 
it human folly and passion and avarice. But, surely, 
we need not put a premium upon them — we need 
not take pains to render public life more attractive 
and accessible to men of a low intellectual and moral 
grade ; or to render it less attractive and accessible to 
men of high moral and intellectual grade. Yet this 
is just what we do by tolerating the existing abuses 
of Federal patronage. The system might well be 
patented as a model contrivance for keeping or 
throwing out of public life the men best qualified to 
perform its duties, and for crowding public life with 
the men least fitted or inclined to perform its duties. 
And when I speak of qualifications, I do not refer 
merely, or mainly, to superior mental or educational 
gifts, nor to political knowledge and training, although 
these are all invaluable ; still less to brilliant powers 



70 OFFICE-SEEKING MANIA. 

of speech, or what is called eloquence ; I refer to 
those plain, honest, home-spun virtues of integrity, 
good sense, candor, moderation, justice, prudence, 
clear-headedness, iirmness, and disinterested zeal for 
the general good, which are at once the substantial 
base and the best elements of American character, 
and without which wise and fruitful statesmanship is 
impossible. 

But not only is the direct tendency of Federal 
patronage as now wielded, to crowd public life with 
unsuitable and small men, it tends indirectly to gen- 
erate an atmosphere not at all favorable to a fine 
sense of personal independence and self-respect, even 
in politicians of the higher and better class. Under 
its influence they sometimes contract the office-seek- 
ing fever, and are led by it to say and do very un- 
seemly things. There is one form of this strange 
and exciting malady — a perfectly distinct type — 
which consists in an intense and irrepressible desire to 
be President of the United States; and some of our 
greatest statesmen, it is notorious, have been violent- 
ly seized with it. Complete recovery is aflfirmed to 
be extremely rare. As a gentle monomania, or hal- 
lucination, at least, it will hang on to the very end of 
life, still keeping up in the bosom of its subject the fond 
hope of one day grasping the much-coveted prize. 

It would, probably, be so, more or less, in any case ; 
for ambition is an infirmity of the noblest minds ; but 
there can be no doubt that the spoils system in mani- 
fold ways greatly increases the trouble. 

And while one effect of it is to keep a large class 
of able and good men out of office, and to inspire a 
second class with a very inordinate anxiety to get into 



FEELING OF MORAL STEWARDSHIP. yi 

office, still another of its evil effects is to impair the 
sense of responsibility in those who actually occupy 
places of public rule and trust. The feeling of moral 
stewardship is at the root of all public virtue and 
sound, rightful administration. Where it is entirely 
wanting, the dearest interests of society pay the pen- 
alty. There, not only do thieves and robbers break 
through and steal, but thieves and robbers are in full 
possession of the house, hold the keys to all its valu- 
ables, and do with them as they list. No one thing is 
more characteristic of true, honest service, whether 
performed by a clerk in the Custom-house, a Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, a member of Congress, or a 
President of the United States, than this feeling. It 
is the brightest and strongest, though often a secret, 
link in the mystic chain that binds together in one 
manly fellowship of duty and honor all classes and 
descriptions of good pubHc officers, from the highest 
to the lowest. He that is faithful in that which is 
least, is faithful also in much. Could we look through 
the various departments of Government with the eye 
of Omniscience, we should, perhaps, discover the 
most exemplary public servant — not in the Chief 
Magistrate of the nation, or in the halls of Congress, 
or even on the bench of the Supreme Court, but in 
one of " the plain people," who for thirty or forty 
years has toiled on^^ unknown, ill-paid, and often in 
terror of summary dismissal, doing cheerfully and 
with diligence whatsoever his hand findeth to do, 
simply for the sake of God and his country. 

A servant, with this clause, 

Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sw^eeps a room as for Thy laws, 

Makes that and th' action fine. 



7 2 BAD, DISHONEST SERVICE. 

And as this high sense of duty is the one thing most 
character!: tic of true, honest service, even so its total 
absence is the one thing most characteristic of all bad, 
worthless, hypocritical service. And right here is 
the weak, diseased spot in our civil administration. 
It is too accessible to drones and sinecurists. It is 
still burdened with too many men of the sort so well 
described by my brother, nearly forty years ago: 

" Office is conferred as the reward of partisan service ; and what 
is the consequence ? Why, the office-holders are not content 
with the pitiful salaries which afford only small compensation for 
present labors, but do not, in their estimation, constitute any 
adequate reward for their previous political services. This re- 
ward, they persuade themselves, it is perfectly right to retain 
from whatever passes through their hands. Being taught that 
all moneys in iheir possession belong not to tlie people, but to 
the party, it requires but small exertion of casuistry to bring 
them to the conclusion that they have a right to retain what they 
may conceive to be the value of their political services ; just as a 

lawyer holds back his commissions Do you not see the 

eagerness with which even Governors, Senators, and Representa- 
tives in Congress grasp at the most trivial appointments — the 
most insignificant emoluments ? Well do these sons of the horse- 
leech know that there is more blood in the body than what mantles 
in the cheek, and more profit in an office than is exhibited by the 
salary. . . . Corruption has been traced, not merely to the doors, 
but into the very recesses of the temple. By the footprints upon 
the floor we have discovered, as did the Chaldeans of old, that the 
rich offerings laid by the people upon the shrine, have been car- 
ried away and consumed, not by tlie god, but by the Juggling 

priests It is a deep and vital question how such things are 

to be prevented in the future ; how this running sore is to be 
healed ; how this system of negligence and corruption is to be 
slopped, and the action of the Government brought back to its 
original purity." 

Negligence and corruption will never be stopped 



RADICAL REFORM NECESSAR V. 73 

until public office of whatever kind — from the Presi- 
dency to a Treasury or Custom-house clerkship — comes 
to be regarded as a sacred trust, received and held in 
the interest of the Government and of the whole peo- 
ple — not in the interest of a party, still less of a party 
manager or member of Congress. 

At the same time I desire to avoid all unfairness 
or injustice. My impression is, that our civil service 
has, in some respects, materially improved of late 
years. This is to be attributed in part, perhaps, to a 
more enlightened public sentiment, as also to the 
special attempts at reform ; and partly to the circum- 
stance that, owing to the long continuance of the same 
party in power, the tenure of office, in many cases, 
has been very much lengthened, and thereby the 
sense of security so essential to quiet, faithful work, 
has been increased, and a great addition also made to 
the actual skill and experience of the service. But 
there can be no doubt whatever that a vast deal re- 
mains to be done ; or that a total change of the rul- 
ing political dynasty v^'-ould instantly expose the coun- 
try to a recurrence of the worst state of things in the 
past. Nothing will suffice but a radical reform of 
the existing system of Federal patronage. And this 
happy consummation, so devoutly to be wished, will 
never be realized until the barbarian motto : To tJie 
victors belo7tg the spoils of the enemy, gives place to the 
humane and Christian principle of public stewardship 
— the principle so gloriously illustrated in the lives and 
labors of the fathers of the Republic, and without 
whose upholding, inspiring influence our free institu 
tions are but a mockery of liberty. 



74 //o;r ca.v our civil service be reformed? 
XIX. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

This brings us face to face with the momentous 
question: How can our civil service be reformed? 
This, indeed, was the specific topic assigned to me. 
But instead of discussing it directly, my aim has thus 
far been to show the absolute necessity of reform, by 
considering the history, nature, and virulence of the 
malady it is designed to heal ; for a clear comprehen- 
sion and good diagnosis of disease is the first step 
toward its cure. Would that the cure were as plain 
and easy as the diagnosis ! I will indicate, very briefly, 
some of the points which seem to me essential to a 
radical and complete cure — a cure as thorough, at 
least, as the infirmities of our nature, the friction in- 
cident to the best arrangements, and the more or 
less conflicting interests involved in any large system 
of human agencies, will permit. But here I ought to 
speak with the greatest diffidence ; for the views I 
shall express are chiefly the result of my own obser- 
vation and reflection, and were mostly formed more 
than a quarter of a century ago. I have never seen 
the English reports on this subject, and am almost 
ashamed to add, that I have not even seen the re- 
ports of our own Civil Service Commission. Some 
years ago I read, with deep interest, a speech on the 
question by Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island — more 
than any other man, as I have supposed, the father 
of Civil Service Reform in the United States — 
and I am well aware of the invaluable efforts in this 
cause, of Mr. George William Curtis and Mr. D. B. 



WHAT IS CIVIL SERVICE REFORM? 



75 



Eaton, not to mention other eminent names. But 
precisely what ground they have taken in reference 
to disputed points, or what were the rules and regu- 
lations recommended by the Government Commission, 
and adopted or partially adopted by the President, I 
do not know. My conclusions, therefore, if entitled 
to any weight whatever, will have, at least, the value 
of fresh and independent testimony. 

What, then, is civil service reform? The phrase, 
as I understand it, has a very simple and definite 
meaning. There is nothing occult or startling about 
it. It is only another way of saying, that the civil 
business of the Government, like any other vast, ever- 
growing, and permanent business, ought to be so organ- 
ized and conducted as to secure the greatest possible 
efficiency, fidelity, skill, and stability in its performance. 
Behold the whole mystery of Civil Service Reform ! 
To this complexion it all comes at last. This is the 
real thing intended. Let me refer to another reform, 
also of very recent origin, which will, perhaps, help 
to understand this, viz. : Sanitary Reform. That 
aims to do for the physical health of the people, 
something quite analogous to what reform in the civil 
service aims to do for their political health. It points 
out the horrid effects of bad ventilation, bad drain- 
age, sewer-gas, cess-pools connecting secretly with 
wells, and other inveterate, noisome violations of the 
laws of life ; and just so Civil Service Reform points 
out the horrid effects caused by the moral miasma, 
the mephitic and poisonous influences, that emanate 
from the cess-pools and other abominations of corrupt 
patronage and subterranean party politics. And not 
only is there a very striking analogy between the two 



^6 TUE TRUE PRINCIPLE OF REFOR.V. 

reforms in the objects aimed at, but in their remedies. 
It confuses one's brain to read all that is written in 
the books of Sanitary Science, about the best methods 
and the details ; but the remedy itself is all condensed 
into Hippocrates' famous formula: "pure air, pure 
water, and pure soil." And so the civil reform has 
some knotty problems to solve as to method and de- 
tail, as to rules and regulations ; but the root and 
essence of the remedy consists in the simple familiar 
elements of honesty, capacity, and skilled efficiency in 
doing the civil business of the Government. Nothing 
more ; nothing less. 

On this solid basis of common sense the military 
and naval business of the country has been conducted 
from the beginning up to this day; and he would be 
thought demented who should propose to re -organize 
and hereafter administer it upon the principle of 
political influence, partisanship, or " rotation in office." 
On this basis of common sense the civil service of the 
country was originally established, and was carried on 
for a period of forty years — almost half of the life- 
time of the Republic. Upon this principle George 
Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James 
Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams — 
all of them, with, perhaps, one exception, great civil- 
ians — acted and dispensed the Federal patronage 
throughout their terms of office ; while among their 
successors who adopted the principle of political and 
party influence and favoritism, only one truly great 
civilian is to be named ; and he was too much ab- 
sorbed in the mighty cares and labors of the war for 
the Union, to allow him time or thought for anything 
else. Indeed, Executive patronage was during his 



IMPEDIMENTS IN THE WA Y. yy 

term essentially a war-power and had to be dispensed, 
especially in the border and seceding States, in a 
somewhat summary and exceptional way. Loyalty 
to the Union was then the primary consideration, 
both in appointments and removals. But, happily, 
that crisis of national existence is past and no longer 
a disturbing force in the administration of the Gov- 
ernment. Nothing now stands in the way of a return 
to the old, time-honored formula : the greatest attainable 
skill, fidelity, efficiency, and permanence. This, I re- 
peat, is the root and essence of the whole matter. 
This at once conforms the civil service to the practice 
of the earlier Presidents, brings it again into harmony 
with the spirit of the Organic Law, and with the 
genius of republican institutions as well, cleanses 
it from the corrupting influence of party politics, 
raises it, all over the country, to the level of other 
useful and honorable callings, and renders it accessible 
to every American citizen, who meets its just require- 
ments, without any sacrifice of opinion or self-respect. 
I said that nothing novv^ stands in the way of a return 
to the wiseand common-sense system ofthe earlier times 
of the Republic. But that statement needs correction. 
No constitutional or legal principle, no lesson of experi- 
ence, no great national exigency, stands in the way ; 
but there are other impediments to such a return, 
which can be overcome only by long patience and the 
most unwearied efforts. As the abuse has grown up 
by degrees and entrenched itself in many strongholds — 
not only of political selfishness and custom, but of 
popular ignorance and prejudice as well — so the reform 
must grow up from strength to strength, must entrench 
itself in public opinion and the public conscience, 



78 



A PALYFUL SlCy OF THE TIMES. 



must give full proof of its practicability and wisdom, 
and so gradually win over to its support the good 
men of all parties, especially the better class of public 
men, who love their country and seek its honor and 
prosperity. One of the most painful signs of the 
times is the sceptical and even contemptuous tone of 
so many of our public men in reference to this sub- 
ject. They illustrate very forcibly what the great 
dramatist of human nature says of the tendency of evil 
to blind, and render at once callous and incredulous, 
its willing victims : 

For when we in our viciousness grow hard. 
Oh, misery on't, the wise gods seal our eyes, 
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us 
Adore our errors, laugh at us, while we strut 

To our confusion. 

But let not the friends of the cause of their coun- 
try, on this account, lose heart. Even the advocates 
of sanitary reform encounter a similar hardness and 
incredulity ; although they deal with flagrant physical 
facts and demonstrations of medical science. A great 
many otherwise sensible people, but in this matter 
verjMvise in their own conceit, think altogether too 
much fuss is made about bad air and bad drainage 
and infected water and sewer-gas ; they do not see 
any such close connection between these things and 
typhoid fever or any other disease ; they do not like 
to go to such trouble and expense ; why not let well 
enough alone? or at least be content with patching 
up and improving the old system of things, which 
"was good enough for our fathers and mothers?" 
They especially resent the suspicion that there is any 



THE CAUSE WILL TRIUMPH t 79 

sewer-gas, or other disease-breeding nuisance, hidden 
away in their own cellars, or anything wrong about 
their own wells and drainage ; do they not — many of 
them — live in splendid brown-stone houses and pride 
themselves upon all the modern improvements, as 
well as upon their fine, healthy situations ? So tens 
of thousands turn their backs upon sanitary reform ; 
nearly the whole community treats it with cold neg- 
lect ; and in the meantime, myriads of precious lives — 
lives in the sweet bud of infancy, or blooming into 
boyish beauty and the loveliness of girlhood, or just 
ripening into useful men and women, or freighted 
with the hard-won treasures of later years — fall a 
prey to the horrible Juggernaut of preventable dis- 
ease ! Still the good work goes on ; popular ignorance, 
inertia, and heedlessness begin to feel the potent touch 
of the new science ; evil habits and practices, whose 
roots run back to the dark ages, are, here and there, 
passing away, and by and by the cause of Sanitary 
Reform will celebrate a splendid victory. And so too, 
as I firmly believe, will it be with the cause of Civil 
Service Reform ; for it is at heart " the good old cause " 
for which our fathers toiled and fought and sat in 
council ; it is in another, but not less worthy form, 
the cause of American liberty and independence. 
And, therefore, all true patriots and especially (to 
use the words of Lord Bacon) " young men full of 
towardness and hope, such as the poets call Aurorae 
filii — sons of the morning'" — should strive and labor 
together for its triumph. 



8o CONDITIOA'S OF SUCCESSFUL REFORM. 

XX. 

PRACTICAL CONDITIONS OF SUCCESSFUL REFORM. 

I have stated already the object and guiding prin- 
ciple of civil service reform. Let me now mention 
some of its practical conditions, {a). Divorce of patro7i- 
age from mere political and party influence. This is a 
vital point. The public offices do not belong to 
party, to politicians, to members of Congress, or to 
the President ; they belong to the country and the 
people, who instituted them for the general good ; 
and they should be filled in such a way that any 
American citizen, without respect to his opinions, 
may properly apply for one of them, and if he meets 
the needful requirements, stand a fair chance of ob- 
taining it. The present system is in glaring conflict 
with the genius of our free institutions. Under such 
restrictions as the Constitution, public discretion, and 
experience prescribe, every position in the Republic 
should be open to all the people alike. This, if any- 
thing, is the true idea of American equality ; and it 
ought to be our practice, as it is our constant boast. 

But let me not be misunderstood. I have said that 
the public offices belong — not to party, or to poli- 
ticians, or to the President, but — to the people. They 
do not belong to the people, however, in the merely 
numerical sense of the term. They do not belong to 
the people as forty millions of individuals, or in their 
well-nigh endless local divisions ; nor in the sense, 
that the people, directly and singly, have any right- 
ful claim upon them. Tlie framcrs of the Constitu- 
tion were far above such crude and puerile concep- 



FA TRONA GE NOT A MERE PARTY TREROGA TIVE. 8 1 

tions of popular government. It probably never 
crossed their minds to consider the subject in this 
empirical way. They had a profound respect for the 
people of the United States in their imperishable, 
corporate character, as the sovereign and ruling power 
in the land ; but they would have recoiled from the 
miserable debasement and caricature of this majestic 
idea, which the spoils system has so largely substi- 
tuted in its place, sometimes even in the form of 
legislation. Take, as an instance, the act of the 
Forty-third Congress, providing that the appoint- 
ments in the Treasury department shall be distributed 
pro rata among the several States and Territories ac- 
cording to population. Possibly, there may be reasons 
of public policy in favor of such a law, which do not 
appear on its face ; but if and so far as it rests upon 
the notion of rightful claims to office, at Washington, 
by States and Territories, according to the number 
of their inhabitants, it seems to me to be founded 
upon the merest fallacy — a fallacy alike absurd and 
hurtful. While, then, I assert that the public offices 
belong to the people of the United States, it is in 
essentially the same sense in which the Government 
and the Union and its free institutions belong to 
them and their posterity forever. And yet the prin- 
ciple of equal opportunity, in reference to the public 
offices, for all American citizens, irrespective of opin- 
ion, is a sound republican and democratic principle. 
A divorce of the Federal patronage, however, from 
political and party influence is, I need not say, a very 
formidable undertaking ; for it involves not merely the 
overthrow of an inveterate and dominant custom, 
but a revolution, as it were, in the habits of thought 



82 PARTISAN SELFISHNESS AND BIGOTRY. 

and very consciousness of the popular mind on this 
subject. The strongest partisan would, probably, be 
somewhat shocked at a proposal to exclude all the 
millions of Democrats from admission to the army 
and navy, or to the military and naval academies ; and 
yet, in principle, where is the difference between such 
an exclusion and that which, under the despotic 
pressure of party interest and party usages, debars 
them from the civil service almost as completely as if 
they were so many aliens, or even natural enemies of 
their country ? Is this genuine republicanism? Is it 
anything else than a policy of intolerable narrow- 
ness, bigotry, and selfishness? Will any respectable, 
candid Republican, however decjded his opinion of 
the errors of the Democracy, deny that — to say the 
least — a very large proportion of that party are, in- 
dividually, just as honest, just as patriotic, just as 
capable of doing faithful work as his own ? And if 
so, why are they not just as fairly entitled to a reason- 
able share in the honors and emoluments of the civil 
service of their country? 

The consequence of this tyrannical system of party 
ostracism is what a very little knowledge of human 
nature would lead any one to expect. A sort of 
badge of inferiority — to use no harsher term — at- 
taches to every Democrat in the United States. The 
Government itself — speaking in the name of the Re- 
publican party — virtually says to them : " You shall 
not, with our consent, occupy any place of honor and 
trust in the civil service of your country. If you 
want office, you must seek it at home ; you must get 
elected governor, senator or assemblyman, or mem- 
ber of Congress ; although we shall do what we can 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. 83 

to prevent that also. We write over all our doors : 
Positively, no admittance for a Democrat! This 
rule must be strictly enforced. If you don't like this 
arrangement, why, it is a free country ; the ballot-box 
is open ; vote us out, and take our place, if you 
can ! " Is anybody quite simple enough to believe 
that the several millions of American citizens, who 
profess the Democratic creed, will not accept the 
challenge ; or that once in possession of the Govern- 
ment, they are not going to make up for lost time 
and pay back old scores, good measure, pressed down, 
and running over? 

What a different state of things would exist, if 
merely those superior and other officers who stand 
in specially close, responsible relations to the Ad- 
ministration, and represent its policy, whether at 
home or abroad, were selected from among its politi- 
cal friends, and the remaining offices were open alike 
to all good citizens, and filled, without regard to opin- 
ion, on the simple ground of proper qualifications? 
If a third or a quarter of these inferior offices of 
the Government were now occupied by suitable and 
capable Democrats, the difficulty in the way of Civil 
Service Reform would be vastly diminished. And it 
is the opinion of very sagacious politicians that, in- 
stead of losing, the party in power would, in the end, 
largely gain by such a policy. Patronage dispensed 
on mercenary principles is a source of weakness rather 
than of strength. Where it makes one friend, it dis- 
appoints a score of friends, and is almost sure to 
make several sore-headed enemies. 

{JS). Fair, open competition or equal opportunity. 
Here we come, I am aware, to a point beset with 



84 COMPE TI TI VE EX AM IN A TIONS. 

some difficulties; but they arc not essentially greater, 
probably, than beset proper rules and regulations for 
carrying on, in the best manner, any widespread and 
complicated business. It takes time to inaugurate a 
new system and so adjust its various parts to each 
other and to the ends in view, that there shall be no 
needless friction or jarring of the machinery. If 
equal opportunity, whether by competitive or other 
examination, is a right principle, we may rest assured 
it is also practicable. No method can be devised 
by which all possibility of favoritism, injustice, or 
mistake shall be avoided. That is beyond the reach of 
human wisdom. In applying even a thoroughly right 
principle, there should, of course, be constant care to 
guard against too much mere technicality, to take 
into the account of defects and shortcomings com- 
pensating advantages, and so to do no wrong to the 
candidate or applicant, who, though at fault in cer- 
tain respects, yet having the root of the matter in 
him, affords, perhaps, the stuff for a most excellent 
public servant. 

Not a little fault has been found with competitive 
examinations. They have sometimes been denounced 
as unjust, and sometimes ridiculed as childish and ab- 
surd. Similar objection may easily be made to any 
form of examination, or to any system whatever, 
that excludes rigidly all mere influence, and opens 
the door of public service to genuine merit alone. 
Competition may be badly used or abused, as may 
every good thing; but the principle itself can stand 
any amount of denunciation, or ridicule ; for it is 
founded in reason and common sense. It is at once 



PROMOTION FOR MERIT. 85 

a natural and moral law ; and, wisely obeyed, is 
fraught with the best results. 

{c). Promotion for merit and length of service. 
By merit I mean good character and conduct, as 
well as tried skill and efficiency. I put merit and 
length of service together; but as a matter of fact, 
they do not always go together. When they do, 
the reason for promotion is at its maximum. But 
it does not seem fair that long service and decidedly 
inferior merit, should always carry the day against 
shorter service and very superior merit. Both merit 
and length of service are factors in the case ; but ex- 
actly how to adjust their reasonable claims may not 
always be so easy a problem. Competitive or stand- 
ard examinations for higher grades, also — at least in 
many cases — would appear to be the right method. 
But, of course, it is not for me to attempt a classifi- 
cation of the offices of the Government, or to show 
precisely how each class may be best arranged and 
dealt with. This is the business of experts. I only 
assert a general principle of wisdom and justice, 
leaving it to be applied whether in appointments, in 
promotions, or in dismissals — for by needful reduc- 
tion of force, and in other ways, more or less em- 
ployes are always liable to be dismissed or dropped — 
in accordance with judicious, well-considered rules, 
with the teaching of experience, and with a humane, 
equitable discretion. I do not believe in an iron-cast 
system, that attempts to reduce the whole matter to 
mathematical exactitude and completeness ; or in a 
mere beaurocracy, or cumbrous, harsh system of red- 
tape, that gives no play whatever to the dictates of 



86 TENURE OF OFFICE. 

common sense and the generous instincts of our no- 
bler nature. 

Meanwhile, the principle itself — that of promotion 
for merit — is most reasonable and salutary. It calls 
into exercise some of the strongest and worthiest 
sentiments of our nature. Everybody knows what 
power it has in the army and navy. Inspired by it, 
how willingly the brave soldier will face the cannon's 
mouth or stand in the imminent, deadly breach ! Every- 
body knows what power it has in all the spheres of 
human exertion. If long and faithful work is to be 
of no account in the way of advancement to a higher 
grade, one of the most effective motives to faithful 
work is paralyzed. And if the skill, knack, prompt 
and easy execution, power of inspiring confidence, 
and other advantages, that grow out of intelligent 
experience, are to be of little or no account in the 
way of advancement to higher grades, then one of 
the great laws of nature and Providence is trampled 
under-foot. Merit, then — especially merit combined 
with experience and length of service — is the proper 
ground of promotion. It is a principle of the divine 
government ; and it will be recognized as a righteous 
principle in every well-ordered human government. 
His Lord said luito him, Well done, good and faithful 
servant ; thon hast been faithful over a few things, I 
will make thee ruler over many tilings. 

{d). Tenure of offiee during the full and meritorious 
performance of its duties. This follows from the 
principles already laid down. I do not stop now to 
discuss exceptions to the rule, as I have not stopped 
to discuss possible exceptions to the rule of equal 
opportunity. There are, very likely, more or less 



COK HAYES' POSITION. 



87 



offices throughout the country, where a competitive 
examination, for example, would be out of place — 
the position of a village postmaster may be one of 
this class — and so there are, perhaps, cases where it 
would be wise expressly to restrict the term. What I 
contend for, is the principle of tenure during efficient 
and exemplary performance of duty, unless there is 
something in the nature of the office, or of the serv- 
ice, to render this inexpedient ; and the instant 
exceptional cases are known, every applicant or ap- 
pointee understands just what to expect. In refer- 
ence to this point, Gov. Hayes, in his letter of ac- 
ceptance, states clearly what seems to me to be the 
right view : 

"We should return to the principles and practice of the 
founders of the Government, supplying by legislation, when 
needed, that which was formerly the established custom. They 
neither expected nor desired from the public officers any partisan 
service. They meant that public officers should give their whole 
service to the Government and to the people. They meant that 
the officer should be secure in his tetture as long as his personal 
character remained untarnished and the perfor7na7ice of his 
duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall conduct the administra- 
tion of the Government upon these principles, and all constitu- 
tional powers vested in the Executive will be employed to estab- 
lish this reform." 

This point is assailed with special vehemence by 
the advocates of the present system. It is, they say, 
unrepublican and aristocratic, as well as unfair and 
unwise ; in fine, a very objectionable provision. But 
why so ? It was, as we have seen, the almost unvary- 
ing practice of the country for forty years ; it is in 
strict accordance with the principle upon which the 
national army and navy are organized ; it is dictated 



88 ROTATION IN OFFICE. 

alike by reason and common sense; the experience 
of the most enlightened governments attests its 
soundness; the advanced political thinkers of the day 
assert that it is indispensable to good and efficient 
administration; why, then, should it be called aristo- 
cratic and unrepublican ? Is it any more so, is it so 
in any other sense, than law and order, official respon- 
sibility, or the swift condign punishment of peculators 
and defaulters and swindlers? Was not Washington 
a good republican ? Was Jefferson an aristocrat ? 
Did not Madison and John Adams and Monroe and 
John Quincy Adams understand the true require- 
ments of American liberty? 

" But even these great men (it is said in reply) were 
not infallible. We believe in progress and hold it to 
have been a real step forward, when the principle of 
rotation m office was substituted for the virtual life- 
tenure of earlier times, Eveiybody admits that the 
true genius of our American democracy is, in some 
respects, better understood, because more fully de- 
veloped, than it was at the beginning of the century. 
Now we contend that rotation in office is a genuine 
democratic development. Is it not, in fact, virtually 
contained in the Constitution itself — which limits the 
terms of the President and the Vice-President to four 
years? And is it not an old unwritten law of the 
land, that no man shall occupy the office of Chief 
Magistrate more than eight years ? Are not Senators 
chosen for six years, and Representatives for two 
years? Are not our Governors all elected for one, 
two, three or four years? And has not this s)'stem 
of short terms and frequent elections always been de- 
fended on the ground, that it is a good thing to have 



ROTATION NO!" IN THE CONSTITUTION. 89 

the public offices filled by men ' fresh from the peo- 
ple?' Has not rotation in office, under the name of 
' rotary eldership,' lately fought its way to a place in 
the constitution of one of our most influential and 
conservative ecclesiastical bodies, as a fairer expo- 
nent of its polity than the old life-tenure?" 

In reply to all this it is enough to say, that the 
change in the term of office of a Presbyterian elder 
is left purely optional with each congregation, and 
was based mainly upon his representative character ; 
and as to the constitutional limitation of the terms 
of service of the President and Vice-President and of 
members of Congress, that it rests upon certain general 
principles of our political system, which do not apply, 
at all, to the merely ministerial and clerical serv- 
ice of the Government; further, that the "inferior 
officers" of the United States, whose tenure, as I con- 
tend, should be during good conduct and faithful per- 
formance of duty, have no representative character 
whatever, unless in the sense that they represent the 
principles of republican honesty, diligence, and hard 
work; there is no more need, therefore, that they 
should be " fresh from the people," than that a Uni- 
ted States judge, or the superintendent of the mili- 
tary academy, or a captain in the navy, should be 
"fresh from the people" in order to fulfill his office 
in the best manner. We must not confound things 
so utterly different. The reason for limiting the 
Executive term to four years, was not to give more 
men a chance to become President of the United 
States — what, I pray, does it matter to the American 
people, whether, during a generation, two or three 
more individuals, or whether two or three less sit in 



90 



TOO MUCH ROTA TION. 



the Presidential chair? — the reason was founded in 
weighty considerations of pubHc poHcy. Had the 
framers of the Constitution and the people of the 
United States believed that a President during good 
, behavior, would be, on the whole, better than a Presi- 
dent every four j'ears, they would not have hesitated 
an instant so to arrange and ordain it. 

Even in its own proper sphere there is, I believe, 
a growing sentiment that " rotation " has been car- 
ried to a most unwise and hurtful extreme; and that 
the government and legislation of the country, both 
in State and Union, would be greatly improved if 
there was far less rotating in and out, and a great deal 
more stability of political character, skill, and expe- 
rience in the public councils. At all events, there is 
no good reason why a subordinate officer of the Gov- 
ernment, who is doing his duty steadily and learning 
to do it better every year, should be turned out, 
merely to let some one else try his unskilled hand 
and share the emoluments. 

(r). Vigilant and impartial discipline. This, too, is 
a vital condition of successful reform. The sinecur- 
ists, drones, and incompetents must be weeded out, and 
Jcept out, no matter whose fathers, sons, brothers, or 
other near relatives they may be, no matter who are 
their patrons. Business is business — more especially 
business which, like that of the General Government, 
affects the interests and peace of forty millions of 
people — and it should be conducted on the principle 
of obedience to law and authority, clock-like regular- 
ity, strict accountability, entire devotion to the pub- 
lic good, and respectful, considerate behavior in all 
its agents and employes, as well as on the principle 



PROVISIOA^ FOR THE OLD AND WORN-OUT. 



91 



of justice, order, promptitude, and the public con- 
venience in all its arrangements and details. Noth- 
ing pleases the people more than a diligent, con- 
scientious, capable, ready, and courteous public officer 
— for he is doing their work, as well as that of the Gov- 
ernment. And nothing irritates and disgusts the peo- 
ple more than a slack-handed, careless, dilatory, and 
ill-mannered public officer — for they feel that he is 
dishonoring and wronging them, as well as their coun- 
try. Let those, therefore, who have at heart a thor- 
ough reform of the civil service, take special pains to 
have vigilant and impartial discipline, a discipline 
including manners, as well as morals and efficient 
work, made part and parcel of the new system. 

(/"). Kindly provision for retiring the worn-out or 
superannuated officer on a moderate stipend. An ar 
rangement of this sort, either by a fund accumulated 
for the purpose or in some other way, while eminently 
right and fitting, would also well become a great and 
wealthy Government like ours. Such treatment of 
good and faithful servants, who have spent their 
years and strength in its service, would do honor 
to republican institutions, the world over. I know it 
is not according to our traditions, or what is supposed 
to be the spirit of our system, to lavish money pro- 
fusely upon even our most distinguished public bene- 
factors. But a moderate provision for those super- 
annuated or broken down in doing its work, would, 
surely, be in admirable harmony with the popular 
genius of the Government and with its long practice 
in other branches of the public service, as also with 
the claims of common justice and humanity. 



92 



OTHER CONDITIONS. 



XXI. 



OTHER CONDITIONS OF A SUCCESSFUL AND PER- 
MANENT REFORM. 

It Avould be a grave mistake to suppose, that a 
genuine and enduring reform of our civil service de- 
pends merely, or mainly, upon the adoption of wise 
rules and regulations. These are highly important ; 
but they are not even half the battle. Still other 
conditions are indispensable. Let me mention some 
of them. 

{a). First of all, then, it will require the utmost 
exertion of Executive power to put in practice the 
wisest rules and regulations; it would be so if they 
were revealed directly from heaven, as the best rules 
and regulations possible. Neither the spoils system 
nor its devotees will yield to anything but power, 
pure and simple ; and there is no earthly power great 
enough to put them down but that vested by the 
Constitution and laws of the land in the President of 
the United States. The same hand that first wrought 
the mischief, must bring relief. The President alone 
can nominate ; and by the decision of the first Con- 
gress, he alone can remove. The initiative, therefore, 
is with him in this whole matter ; and if in the interest 
of a thorough renovation of the civil service, he 
choose to exert all his constitutional and legal prerog- 
atives as earnestly as they have been used for near- 
ly half a century in the interest of party, there is 
little doubt that he can, at least, fairly inaugurate a 
return to the principles and practice of the founders 
of the Republic. And this alone would be a work 



WHOLE EXECUTI VE POWER REQUIRED. 93 

worthy of any patriot's or statesman's ambition. It 
would be a work worthy of Washington himself. 
Fortunately, he would have at the start some special 
advantages — a s\.xon^ purchase , in fact — in the way of 
statutory provision. Old laws which have fallen into 
neglect or never been fully carried out, contain, 
sometimes, a grant of power of most excellent use, 
when the right man to wield it fills the Executive 
chair. Section 1753 of the Revised Statutes of the 
United States contains such a law, passed in 1871. 
It is as follows : 

"The President is authorized to prescribe such regulations 
for the admission of persons into the civil service of the United 
States as may best promote the efficiency thereof, and ascertain 
the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, 
knowledge, and ability for the branch of service into which he 
seeks to enter ; and for this purpose he may employ suitable per- 
sons to conduct such inquiries, and may prescribe their duties and 
establish regulations for the conduct of the persons who may re- 
ceive appointments in the civil service." 

This is a very comprehensive provision, and will 
greatly aid the President, who shall enter upon the 
work of putting down the spoils system with full 
purpose of heart. There is dormant in it immense 
reforming power ; only it will require the prudence, 
sagacity, tact, and firm, steady hand of a genuine 
ruler and statesman, to waken that dormant power 
into beneficent life and action. 

There is still another law, dating as far back as 
1853, which is decidedly in the interest of civil service 
reform— at least in the departments at Washington. 
It will be found in sections 163 and 164 of the Re- 
vised Statutes of the United States, and is as follows : 

" Sec. 163. The clerks in the departments shall be arranged 



94 



FUR TJIER LEG I SLA TION. 



into four classes, distinguished as the first, second, third, and 
fourth classes. 

"Sec. 164. No clerk shall be appointed in any department in 
either of the four classes above designated until he has been ex- 
amined and found qualified by a board of three examiners, to 
consist of the chief of the bureau or office into which such clerk 
is to be appointed, and two other clerks to be selected by the 
head of the department." 

These provisions have been at times, I believe, 
partially followed in the Treasury Department ; but 
otherwise have remained, it is said, a dead letter. 

Armed with the special power contained in these 
statutes, and with the general Executive power 
vested in him by the Constitution of the United 
States, a President bent upon civil service reform, 
and choosing his Cabinet with a view to its promotion, 
would be able, in the space of four years, even without 
the aid of further legislation, to accomplish a vast 
deal in the right direction. The many abuses of 
Federal patronage in the past might thus be turned 
into instruments of righteousness. A power highly 
dangerous in itself may prove, in a great exigency 
and in wise, patriotic hands, full of saving health and 
benediction. 

{b). But it would be little short of a miracle, if true 
civil service reform should be established and get 
rooted as the national policy without further legisla- 
tion. No President will prosecute this herculean 
task without a profound conviction that it is vitally 
important to the best interests of the country; and 
nowise President, therefore, will undertake it without 
soliciting, on this ground, the earnest cooperation of 
the national Legislature. He is required, indeed, by 
his oath of office to " give to the Congress informa- 



ALL PARTIES COMMITTED. 95 

tion of the state of the Union, and recommend to 
their consideration such measures as he shall judge 
necessary and expedient." No words could more 
happily describe right and wise measures of civil 
service reform. Such measures concern the state of 
the Union in reference to its moral life, and are, in a 
very eminent sense, both " necessary and expedient." 
And it is to be presumed that such an Executive 
appeal to the law-givers of the nation would not be 
in vain. There are among them, it can not be denied, 
too many mere self-seeking politicians ; but there are 
also among them, in both parties, politicians of a 
better class, who mean, on the whole, to do what is 
best for their country ; and there are some real, high- 
minded statesmen — men, who look before and after, 
and would scorn to oppose measures which their 
conscience and judgment approved, on any narrow 
personal or partisan ground. It is to be remembered, 
moreover, that both of the great parties of the coun- 
try are deeply committed by their platforms, and the 
utterances of their leaders, to the principle, if not to 
specific measures, of reform. I have already quoted 
from the letter of acceptance of Gov. Hayes. Gov. 
Tilden has also expressed himself emphatically on 
the subject : " The question of honest administration 
(such is his language) and the question of securing 
official accountability are the great questions of the 
future." It would require a volume to cite all the 
varied declarations of the Republican party in de- 
nunciation of the present system. The following is 
a resolution of the Democratic party, assembled in 
their national Convention : 

" That the civil service of the Government has become a mere 



g(S ISA CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NEEDED? 

instrument of partisan tyranny and ambition, and an object of 
selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, 
and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the prosperity of re- 
publican government. We, therefore, regard a thorough reform 
of the civil service as one of the most pressing necessities of the 
hour." 

Hypocrisy, I know, is a bosom-sin, and deceiving 
the people one of the fine-arts, of our party poHtics. 
None throw up their caps at the noble and states- 
manhke sentiments that so much abound in poHtical 
platforms, more enthusiastically than wire - pulling 
office-holders and managers. The delight and unc- 
tion with which they roll the patriotic, and especially 
the reforming, resolutions, like a sweet morsel, under 
their tongues, is something marvelous. Not because 
they really like the taste of such resolutions, but be- 
cause they like to think how beautifully fitted they 
are to tickle and delude the public. 

And yet I find it hard to believe that the solemn 
and oft-repeated declarations of both parties, are not 
sincerely approved of by the great body of the peo- 
ple ; or that a goodly number of their Senators and 
Representatives in Congress, would not cooperate 
with the President in a reform, which they profess to 
regard as so expedient and so necessary. 

As to the legislation most appropriate to the end in 
view, differences of opinion will, of course, exist. Some 
think a constitutional amendment indispensable; at 
least, a reversal of the constitutional construction of 
the Congress of 1789, giving the power of removal to 
the President alone. Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun, 
as wc have seen, regarded that decision as a fountain 
of evil ; and yet they were not ready to propose its 



THE SENATE THE CITADEL OF THE ABUSE. 



97 



reversal. My own mind inclines to the view, that it 
has already wrought its worst mischief and that wise 
legislation can now reach the seat of the trouble as 
effectually, perhaps, as would a constitutional amend- 
ment, or a new construction respecting the power of 
removal. The Senate is no longer the body it once 
was. It is composed, in larger measure, of an inferior 
class of politicians. It does not represent and embody 
the pure, high-minded, conservative, and independent 
statesmanship, or the intellectual and moral power, of 
the country, as it did in former days. The old order 
of civilians, trained in the times that tried men's 
souls, or in the age next following, are all gone; and 
but few altogether like them have taken their places. 
Fifty years ago the cry was, that Executive patronage 
was going to corrupt the nation and overthrow re- 
publican liberty ; and the Senate was called upon to 
prevent the catastrophe. Forty years ago the burden 
of complaint was, that Executive patronage had cor- 
rupted the nation, by fastening upon it the tyrannical, 
odious spoils system ; and the Senate, which had 
bravely resisted the revolutionary policy, was also 
loudest in denouncing it. But for years past the 
Senate of the United States has been itself the 
strong citadel of this monstrous abuse. Its members 
have gradually usurped and absorbed so large a por- 
tion of the Federal patronage, that when they meet 
as an executive body, to act upon the President's 
nominations, they are, to all intents and purposes, in 
a majority of cases, acting upon their own individ- 
ual nominations, are advising themselves, and con- 
senting with each other to their own appointments. 
The President is simply their agent and tool in the 



98 REPEAL OF THE FOUR YEARS' LAW. 

matter. It seems to me, therefore, a serious question 
whether, all things considered, the joint exercise by 
the Senate of the removing as well as the appointing 
power, is now a thing to be desired. 

Certainly, if it were left for me to choose, either to 
give the Senate this power, or to repeal the Four 
Years laiv of 1820, in the interest of Civil Service 
Reform I should hardly hesitate, as the case now 
presents itself, to choose the latter. My impression 
is that the tenure of office law — which, as I have said 
before, was passed largely in the interest of the Re- 
publican party — may yet be found to thwart rather 
than further the restoration of the Federal patronage 
to its original design and purit}'. 

No radical and complete reform in the civil service 
will be safe, while the law of 1820 continues in force. 
That law is itself in direct conflict with such a reform, 
and so long as it stands upon the national statute- 
book, it will contain the same potent elements of 
mischief which have wrought so disastrously in the 
past. Mr. Calhoun felt this, when, immediately after 
its passage, he declared that it was most dangerous 
and would work a great revolution. He saw this 
when, fifteen years later, he introduced into the Sen- 
ate a bill to repeal it. Mr. Webster saw this, when 
he urged the repeal in one of his weightiest speeches. 
The Senate of the United States — then in its most 
palmy days — clearly saw this when, after long debate, 
it passed Mr. Calhoun's bill by a vote of 31 to 16. 
Whether exactly this bill, in what it substitutes in 
place of the Four Years' law, should be enacted, or 
whether something still more decided and compre- 
hensive is nov/ needed, I will not stop to inquire. 



REFORM THE PEOPLE 'S CA USE. 



99 



What legislation is still required and would be best 
fitted to secure and render permanent the reform, 
conforming it to the spirit of our institutions and the 
lessons of experience, while guarding it well against 
a new class of abuses — this, of course, is a problem 
of patriotic, senseful, and discerning statesmanship. 

But let no one fancy that a large portion of the 
offices of the country can become vacant every four 
years — thousands of them almost at the moment of 
the inauguration of a new President — and Civil Serv- 
ice Reform endure the shock. So long as the new 
President and his party are in full sympathy with it, 
the reform may stand ; but nobody can foretell how 
soon a President may be elected whose heart is hard- 
ened against it, and who, under the overwhelming 
pressure of party animosity, party greed, and personal 
pledges, will yield up the citadel to the old enemy. 
Then how quickly would the strongest supports of the 
new policy be swept out of existence ; even as the 
Mill River dam was swept away under the pressure of 
the accumulated, angry waters ! 

{c). But neither Executive power nor wise legisla- 
tion is enough. To secure the full and enduring 
triumph of this reform, the American people must 
take it in hand, for it is their cause ; just as in the 
days of our Revolutionary fathers, liberty and inde- 
pendence were the people's cause ; just as the war 
for the Union and the overthrow of slavery were the 
people's cause. It is, I say, the people's cause ; and 
in order to succeed, it must become enthroned in 
the popular mind and conscience. It must become 
a solemn fiat of the popular will. Then, and not till 
then, the party politicians will fall into line and keep 



100 ^^^ PEOPLE MUST BE AROUSED. 

step to the new music. i\ll true patriots, therefore, 
especially the more thoughtful and influential classes, 
should be willing to devote any amount of time and 
effort and money to the furtherance of the object, as 
a high and imperative civic duty. The press and 
the platform should be subsidized in its behalf. Nor 
should the pulpit keep silence. Tracts addressed to 
the plain people, explaining to them the whole mat- 
ter, with pointed facts and illustrations, should be 
prepared and circulated far and wide. Liberal prizes 
should be offered for the best essays upon the more 
difficult points. No stone should be left unturned 
in order to interest, enlighten, convince, and stir up 
the popular mind on the subject. Blessed are ye that 
sow beside all zvatcrs, that send forth thither the feet 
of the ox and the ass. The practicability of reform 
has already been tested. Local attempts have been 
made, with the best results — results fitted to make a 
strong impression upon the common sense and right 
feeling of the people. In the post-office of this city, 
for example, a silent revolution has been going on 
ever since Mr. James took charge of it. I recently 
made inquiries on the subject of the superintendent 
of my own branch station, and received the following 
reply : 

New York, February 23, 1877. 
Dear Sir : In reply to your favor, I would state that I have 
been in the service of the New York Post-office nearly fourteen 
years. During this period I have passed through the several 
grades, having been first a carrier, then a clerk, and for the last 
nine years the superintendent of a branch station. I have had 
an opportunity, therefore, to observe minutely the working of the 
system under both the old and the new regime. By the old 
regime, I mean the running of the post-oibce in the interest of 



REFORM IN A BRANCH POST-OFFICE ST A TION. iqi 

party politics. There was a time when all the appointments for 
this station were dictated by the local managers ; and to all 
intents and purposes, it was their concern. The appointees, 
aware of this fact, and remembering to whom they owed their 
places, naturally depended upon giving satisfaction to their po- 
litical patrons, rather than upon intelligent and faithful work, for 
retaining their positions. The result was what you would expect. 
The men without principle and without capacity — and too many 
of the appointees were of this sort — soon became careless and 
indolent ; they performed their duties negligently ; they fell into 
bad habits ; they were sometimes guilty of serious offenses ; and 
yet they were virtually independent of the superintendent. If he 
undertook to call them to account and to inflict penal'ties for 
violating the rules and regulations of the department, he found 
his hands tied, and his reproofs and attempts at discipline treated 
with utter indifference, if not with contempt. They had only to re- 
port to their ' backers.^ giving their own version of the trouble, and 
the chances were rather in favor of the removal of the superin- 
tendent himself, on false charges, than of their losing their places 
for neglect of duty. It is easy to see what all this led to — namely, 
an irregular, insecure, and annoying service, in which the public 
were the chief sufferers. Serving the public well was not the 
title by which the employe got and held his place. 

In pleasant contrast with all this is the system of appoint- 
raents and dismissals in the branch office referred to, introduced 
by the present postmaster. There is an entire difference in the 
whole manner and method of conducting the business. No po- 
litical or other backing avails any one, who for lack of inclination 
or ability fails to do the work required of him. Each man has 
now a check upon the serv^ice performed by him, and is held 
strictly responsible for any error or omission in the line of his 
duty. The natural effect of this has been to encourage and 
stimulate the worthy to do their very best, as diligence and fidel- 
ity are now a better recommendation than any political 'backing' 
gave them under the old regime. This constant striving for 
excellence in their different departments has brought the force 
to a degree of efficiency hardly to be believed, v/hen compared 
with the unsatisfactory and loose methods of the old plan. Then 
the ability of a man was frequently rendered almost useless by 



102 ^ SPECIME.V OF REFORM. 

his bad liabits. Now every man has a check upon his actions, 
as well as upon his performance of the duties assigned him ; and 
any deviation from the rules of sobriety and good behavior meets 
with merited punishment, irrespective of party leaders or local 
managers. 

The business of the carriers, clerks, etc., of a branch post- 
office station brings them into close and continuous — you might 
almost say, confidential — relations and contact with the general 
pul)lic ; aside, therefore, from capacity for mere routine work, the 
mental caliber, as well as character and manners, of the employes, 
becomes a most important consideration. The public has now 
been so well educated on the subject, and is accustomed to such 
a degree of promptitude and accuracy in the service, that a 
return to the former system would hardly be tolerated. 

Most respectfully yours, 

Theodore Karner, 

Superintendent Branch H. 
Rev. Dr. Prentiss, 

Can anybody doubt whether or not an enHghtened 
popular opinion will approve such a change as this all 
over the country, and in every department of the public 
service ? 

Such appear to me to be some of the leading and 
most vital points in the matter of Civil Service Re- 
form. 

CONCLUSION. 

Since this paper was begun, the Electoral Com- 
mission has been appointed and scenes of an extra- 
ordinary and most exciting character have been pass- 
ing before the gaze of the American people. But 
the American people themselves have not, for an in- 
stant, lost their mental or moral equipoise and self- 
possession ; nor have then been idle lookers-on. I 
can not but think they have marked, learned, and will 



LESSONS OF THE HOUR. 



103 



inwardly digest the solemn and momentous lessons 
of the hour; and that, in due time, these lessons will 
reappear as the expression of their sovereign, ordain- 
ing will, in the Constitution and laws of the land. 
Meanwhile, the events of the past few weeks have 
not weakened, certainly, the positions I have tried to 
maintain ; on the contrary, they have illustrated in a 
very striking way, as it seems to me, the extent and 
the accursed effects of the dry-rot in American poli- 
tics. In conclusion, then, I repeat, that, since the 
overthrow of slavery, a wise, comprehensive, and 
thorough civil service reform is what the country 
needs more than anything else, and what would 
bring with it incalculable social reliefs and public 
benefits. But it is a work whose accomplishment 
will require not only a President of the greatest firm- 
ness, courage, wisdom, and patriotism, but will re- 
quire also the utmost strength, intelligence, and per- 
sistent energy of public opinion, backed by all the 
moral forces of the nation. Even then the special 
favor of Almighty Providence alone will be potent 
enough to give a final and complete victory. And so 
may it please the God of our fathers to purify, bless, 
and save the Republic ! 
New York, March i, 1877. 



XXII. 

THE NEW ADMINISTRATION: — IS IT THE DAWN OF 
A NEW ERA? 

Since these closing sentences were penned, a great 
change has come over the spirit of the country. The 



104 



THE NEW PRESIDENT. 



first of March seems very far back in the past. The 
hard-fought struggle is over. A new President has 
been inaugurated as peacefully as if he had been de- 
clared elected by one hundred majority of the Elec- 
toral votes, instead of a majority of one. To the de- 
feated party the result has very naturally brought the 
bitterest disappointment, coupled with a strong asser- 
tion of its injustice; but there has been no attempt 
to set it aside. The whole matter was submitted, 
fairly and squarely, to the arbitrament of the Electoral 
Commission ; and it would have been an indelible 
stigma upon the country's honor, if their verdict had 
not ended the perilous strife. Few events, probably, 
in our political history will hereafter be regarded as 
more creditable to the good sense and " sober second 
thought " of the American people. The title of the 
new President to his great office is clear and unim- 
peachable ; but it is none the less a title won under 
circumstances in the highest degree trying, and fitted, 
one should think, to inspire him with an unusually 
vivid feeling of his responsibility to the whole coun- 
try and to all the people. If we may judge by his 
brief Inaugural, by the Cabinet he has chosen, and by 
his whole tone and demeanor thus far, it is evident that 
he feels deeply the heavy pressure of this responsi- 
bility. Whatever errors he may commit — and were 
he a second Washington, or another Lincoln, he 
would still be an erring mortal — we may be pretty 
sure they will be errors of judgment and not of tem- 
per or intention. About his Southern policy, it is 
not strange that there should be a good deal of 
sensitiveness and serious diversity of opinion as well. 
Doubtless, he himself has felt its peculiar embarrass- 



THE NEW SOUTHERN POLICY. 



105 



ments more keenly than anybody else. To abandon 
a mistaken policy, which has become thoroughly en- 
tangled in party opinions, party passions, and sup- 
posed party interests, as also with many personal and 
political fortunes, and is supported still by honest and 
patriotic men — even after its utter failure has been 
demonstrated — this requires uncommon firmness, 
patience, and willingness to be, for a time, misunder- 
stood alike by friends and foes. Certainly, the lead- 
ing principle of President Hayes' so-called Southern 
policy was plainly asserted in his speeches in 1875 and 
in his letter of acceptance. And that principle is, un- 
deniably, a genuine American idea and a vital ele- 
ment of American constitutional liberty. Let us 
hope that, in spite of all fears or temporary appear- 
ances to the contrary, it will, in due time, justify 
both itself and the President by its healing and 
peaceable fruits. 

But I refer to this subject chiefly on account of its 
bearing upon the great question of civil service re- 
form. Since the close of the war. Federal patronage, 
it is notorious, has been largely dispensed at the 
South in a way to occasion much scandal, and to 
bring reproach and contempt, as well as relentless 
hostility, upon the party in power. And it is difficult 
to see how all this could be avoided in the future, 
should the old system of patronage, as an engine of 
personal and party influence, be continued. Men do 
not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. A 
corrupt tree can not bring forth good fruit. I do not 
see how Mr. Hayes could, possibly, carry out his 
pledges in favor of a radical and complete reform 
of the civil service, without abandoning, root and 



Io6 THE PRESIDENT'S PLEDGES. 

branch, the old Southern policy. And yet stern 
fidelity to these pledges is a matter of life and death 
to his political honor. He can not prove faithless to 
them without virtual perjury; for by them he discards 
utterly the pernicious notion that what is called 
Executive patronage, is a personal prerogative to be 
exercised according to his own caprice or self-will. 
He regards the patronage of his office, on the con- 
trary, as a solemn trust committed to him by the 
American people, and holds himself bound by his 
constitutional oath to dispense it solely in the inter- 
est of the Government and for the general good. 

That he really means to keep these pledges, and 
employ all constitutional powers vested in the Ex- 
ecutive to establish this reform, is a political event 
as astonishing as it is full of hope and good omen. 
It is hard to orient ourselves, to tell just where we 
are, in the presence of such a strange phenomenon. 

Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in 
our latter times. 

Has our new President been in communication 
with the spirits of Washington, old John and John 
Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe? 
Or, has he been taking counsel of the spirits of 
Webster, Clay, and Calhoun? What is the matter 
with him, that he thinks himself obliged to turn a deaf 
ear to the loud warnings and entreaties of so many 
shrewd political soothsayers, and to listen instead to 
the still, small voice of his own conscience, to the 
approving voice of the American people, and to 
those "deep, prophetic bodcmcnts" of Christian wis- 
dom and statesmanship, which 

By the power of the informing word. 
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years ? 



SIGNS OF A NEW ERA. jq^ 

Nor is this the only puzzle of the hour. Other strange 
things have happened, and keep happening almost 
everyday. Look at the Cabinet. One of its members 
a Southern Democrat and an ex-Confederate officer ! 
And not a man was put into it, apparently, in 
accordance with a previous bargain, or on account of 
his " claims," or in compliance with the wishes of 
strong State " delegations," or at the dictation of some 
mighty party chieftain. The President actually se- 
lected his own confidential advisers ! But this is not 
the most surprising thing he has done. While insist- 
ing upon his own constitutional right and duty of 
free speech, choice, and action, he concedes the same 
right to others ! And he does not sulk or use harsh, 
angry words, or stand, offended, upon his dignity, 
when, in the exercise of it, they see fit to sharply 
criticise, or oppose, him and his policy. A soft an- 
swer turneth away wrath, and he seems to understand 
it, as also the wisdom of making haste slowly. He 
has obviously got hold of a secret of public influence, 
which too many American politicians are utterly igno- 
rant of — I mean, manly simplicity and sincerity. The 
real, sensible people delight to see these qualities 
reflected in the language and acts of one in high 
position, even as they despise pretentious noise and 
bluster and double-dealing, whether in high or low. 
It really looks as if a new era were dawning — an era 
in which patriotic wisdom and good sense, instead 
of selfish partisanship, will be in the ascendant. How 
large a portion of the people of the United States 
would heartily rejoice to have it so ! I do not believe 
a political millennium is at hand. Both Republicans 
and Democrats will take care to prevent that. We 



I08 THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION'. 

shall still have parties, old and new, and a great deal 
too much of party passion, prejudice, and folly. But 
unless many signs fail, we have reason to anticipate 
an early and substantial improvement in several im- 
portant directions, more especially in that of civil 
service reform.* 

The position of the press is, on the whole, exceed- 
ingly favorable to this reform. The most influential 
dailies and weeklies — those great organs, as well as 
guides and teachers, of public opinion — are outspoken 
and unwearied in its support. And so too are some 
of the leading statesmen of the Union. Even since 
these lines were written, my eye has fallen upon a 
letter of Mr. Hill, the new Senator from Georgia, in 
which he expresses himself on this subject with singu- 
lar force and plainness of speech. His letter is itself 



* A friend has put into my hands the Reports of the Civil Service 
Commission, made to the President in 1871 and 1874, together 
with Mr. D. B. Eaton's paper, entitled " The Experiment of Civil 
Service Reform in the United States," read before the American So- 
cial Science Association, at Detroit, May, 1875. Whoever wishes 
to become thoroughly informed with regard to the history, grounds, 
theory, methods, and results of Civil Ser\-ice Reform under Presi- 
dent Grant, as also the excuses and responsibility for its abandon- 
ment, should, by all means, acquaint himself with these ver)- able 
and instructive documents. They throw a flood of light upon 
the whole subject, and rellect Listing honor \\\>on the patriotic 
zeal and labors of Mr. Curtis, Mr. Eaton, and their associates on 
the Commission. Had I read them before preparing this paper, 
I might have written much more to the point. It appears, from 
the Report of 1 87 1 , that the office-seeking mania had begun to show 
itself, with no little violence, years before the spoils system came 
into vogue. " The Joint Congressional Committee upon Re- 
trenchment reported, in 1S6S, that havir.g consulted all accessible 
means of information, thev h.ul not learned of a single removal 



REMARKABLE LETTER OF SENATOR HILL. 



109 



a remarkable and most auspicious sign of the times. 
I can not forbear quoting some of his trenchant, states- 
manlike utterances. Having declined to " make rec- 
ommendation for office — especially for offices to be 
passed upon the Senate," he thus assigns a reason for 
his course : 

The Senate is clothed with certain executive functions and 
duties. It is, in this respect, the advisory body of the President. 
But advisory, hov^^ ? Is a Senator to advise the President whom 
he, the Senator, would hke to have nominated ? Is he not rather 
to advise the President whether nominations made are of fit and 
proper persons for the offices designated ? 

This advisory position is a pubUc trust. Each Senator is a 
trustee, not for himself, nor for his friends, nor against his ene- 
mies, but for the public good. The Senator represents the whole 
State and every citizen in the State. Every citizen is entitled to 
have that representation fair, equal, and impartial. When a 



of a subordinate officer, except for cause, from the beginning of 
Washington's administration to the close of that of John Quincy 
Adams." And yet the pressure to remove was, as Jefferson said, 
like a torrent. When by the death of an incumbent a vacancy 
actually occurred, inasmuch as it was filled — not by any fixed rule 
or competition, but according to the mere pleasure of the Execu- 
tive — the struggle for the office was vehement. When an audi- 
torsh'p of the Treasury became vacant under President Monroe, 
it is stated that among the applicants were five United States Sen- 
ators and thirty Representatives in Congress. In 1828 Mr. Van 
Buren said that " The Chief Justice of the proudest and largest 
State was a candidate for a place in the Treasury Department to 
which none but third-rate men would aspire." 

The Report of 1874 contains a mass of facts and testimonies 
in favor of the general principles of the reform, as thus far tested 
by actual trial ; and shows also, by citing the resolutions of their 
national and State conventions, how unequivocally and emphati- 
cally all parties — Republicans, Democrats, and Liberals — have ap- 
proved of it and pledged themselves to its support. 



no A SEA' A TOR 'S DU T Y. 

Senator selects one applicant for an office, and represents that 
one, he becomes partial for that one, and partial against all 
others. He abdicates his office of trustee for all, and becomes 
the attorney for one, and, as experience sadly shows, too often 
for a consideration in some form ; and any consideration v.'mch 
induces such partiality is quite as bad, morally, as a consideration 
in money. Each applicant for an office is entitled to an impartial 
consideration of his merits for the office sought, and he is entitled, 
not only to that impartial judgment of his Senator, but also to 
impartial information from his Senator as an adviser of all others 
who are to pass on the application. When the Senator becomes 
the advocate for one applicant, he, by that act, disqualifies him- 
self both as a judge and an adviser upon the merits of all other 
applicants. 

In my opinion, a Senator has no more right to select one of a 
number of applicants for office, and use the influence of his po- 
sition to give that applicant success, than a judge on the bench 
has the right to select one litigant in his court and use all the 
powers of his judicial position to secure success for that liti- 
gant. 

No man can be fonder of his friends than myself. No man 
can be more gratified when his friends succeed under a fair and 
impartial consideration of their merits. But I esteem the public 
good, and my own duties as a public sen'ant to promote the pub- 
lic good, far before all personalities or obligations. If I were to 
use a public office to gratify private friendships, or to avenge pri- 
vate wrongs, or to promote, in any way, my private or political 
interests, I should feel that I had become guilty of a gross breach 
of trust, for which the proper penalty would be disqualification 
to hold any public office whatever If I were called to desig- 
nate the crime of all crimes in this generation, I would say it is 
personalism in Government — by which I mean the use of the 
offices of Government to promote personal interests and am- 
bitions. Three-fourths of the evils that now curse the countr)', 
and nearly all the perils that have threatened the Government, 
have sprung from this great crime. 

There are men — noisy men, too — in both the Senate and 
House at \\'ashini:;ion, whose only idea of the science of govern- 
vient is defined by the art of controlling the public patronage as 



CONGRESSIONAL RINGS. 1 1 1 

a means of Jwldifig power. They form rings., make combina- 
tzons, organize cliques, attd in some instances absohitely control 
large States. They get their tools in nearly all the departtnents 
of the G.,vernimnt at Washijtgton, and i7t the States, and each 
tool regards it as his sacred duty to keep the public supplied with 
puffs of the noble deeds and great eloquence of his be7ief actor. 

Thousands of offices have been made solely to provide places 
for friends of members of Co7igress. Millions of money are 
levied in taxes upon the people amiually to feed these supple 
servants of some of our great men. The President of te7i finds 
hi77iself de7iou7iced, or his 7i077ii7iatio7is opposed, solely because 
they do not suit the purposes of these ri7tg chiefs i7i Co7tgress. 

The large crowd of carpet-baggers that were sent South a 
few years ago, were the mere tools of leading men who desired, 
through their tools, to get control of the Southern States for 
their own advancement. And there are men now in the Senate 
making themselves most gallant defenders of those who linger 
to annoy our people and disgust all good men, solely because 
they hope, through these few who remain here, to get delegations 
to suit them in the next nominating Republican convention. 

The offices of the country, too, are filled with mere politicians 
ready to serve their masters, instead of with men of business 
experience and qualifications 

How can we ever expect to elevate the statesmanship of the 
country, reform abuses, and nationalize our politics, if even the 
high position of Sena^tpr is to be degraded to an agency for 
office-seekers and general political jobbery .'' 

Even if the foregoing reasons were not sufficient to justify 
the conclusions announced in the above telegram, I am frank to 
confess that, with my limited abilities, I am not able to discharge 
the higher duties of the Senatorship, if I give my time to the 
business of procuring offices. 

The proper rule is for applicants to forward their applications 
for office directly to the appointing power. Every applicant from 
Georgia has the right in his application to refer to me, or any 
other Senator or Representative, for information touching his fit- 
ness for the office sought. I will cheerfully and honestly give such 
information as I possess to the President, if asked, before the 
nomination, and to the Senate in passing on the nomination. 



112 THE WA y OF DELIVERA.XCE. 

Before the President and the Senate every man shall have from 

me an equal chance on his merits 

If we would avoid a continuance of the evils that have cursed 
us in the past, we must abandon the causes that produced them. 
If we would elevate our politics, we must improve the ways of 
our politicians. If we would relieve the burdens of the people, 
we must sustain honesty to government. We must have no 
office that is not needed, and no officer that is not competent. 

When such sentiments as these inspire the Execu- 
tive of the nation and bear sway in the Senate of the 
United States, the Federal patronage will be restored 
to its original purity, and the reproach of the spoils 
system w'ill pass away. And may we not hope that 
many Southern Senators — following in the footsteps 
of the old, canonized leader of the South, Mr. Cal- 
houn — will come up to the help of the President and 
of their country in this great struggle ? It will be a 
sore disappointment to thousands at the North, if 
such men as Mr. Bayard, the eminent Senator from 
Delaware ; Gen. Gordon, the other Senator from 
Georgia ; Gen. Morgan, the new Senator from Ala- 
bama, whose opening speech won him so much honor; 
Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, and Mr. Garland, of Ar- 
kansas — to name no others — do not array themselves 
on the side of a radical and complete reform. 

I have already alluded to the revolution which 
has been quietly going on in the post-office of this 
city under Mr. James, and have given an account of 
its working in a branch station. The universal and 
hearty applause with which it has been greeted, 
is clear proof of its popularity. And there is no 
reason to doubt, that so far as the people of New 
York, in distinction from the mere politicians, are 
concerned^ they would hail a similar revolution in 



MR. JAMES AND THE N. Y. POST-OFFICE. 113 

the custom-house with equal satisfaction. How could 
it be otherwise, after their experience of the reform 
in the post-office, and, on the other hand, their re- 
peated experience, in the persons of some of our most 
worthy and honored citizens, of the flagitious abuses 
connected, in late years, with the custom-house ? 

It is said that Gen. Dix, while at the head of the 
New York post-office, under President Buchanan, in- 
stituted some salutary reforms, with a view of sever- 
ing it from political control, and placing it on a purely 
business footing. But higher duties soon called him 
elsewhere, and things returned to their old condition. 
To Mr. Thomas L. James the commercial metropolis 
is indebted for the present reform, and his example 
deserves both praise and imitation. As a fit accom- 
paniment, therefore, of the extracts from Mr. Hill's 
letter, and as a practical illustration of some of the 
main positions of this tract, I give an article which 
appeared in The New York Tribune, of March 20th, 
entitled WHY THE PosT-OFFicE IS Efficient. 
On one or two points a question might be raised, but 
I will not stop now to raise it. 

' The Post-office is a business institution and not a political 
machine,' said Postmaster James when asked by a Tribune re- 
porter to give his idea of Civil Service Reform. A desire for in- 
formation as to the manner in which civil service rules and busi- 
ness principles had been successfully applied to an office much 
coveted in the past by politicians for its use as an election machine, 
was gratified. 'We have adopted,' said the Postmaster, ' a few 
simple general principles or rules : First, no removals except for 
cause and after a fair and impartial trial — political reasons not 
being considered a " cause ; " second, all vacancies by reason of 
death, resignation, or from removal for cause to be filled from 
the party controlling the National Administration. It is only 



114 



REFORM IN THE X. Y. POST-OFFICE. 



fair, I think, that whatever party is in control of the Government 
should have a representation in the office, but no removals should 
be made of capable men of one party affiliation to make room for 
applicants of another ; third, all appointments to be to the lowest 
grade of service, applicants to pass a standard examination (like 
that at West Point), not a competitive test ; all promotions to be 
made from a lower to a higher grade. Those are the general 
principles on which this office is conducted. Our examinations 
of applicants and quarterly tests of the capacity of the men em- 
ploj-ed are of a practical nature, with reference to the business 
they have to do. As a rule, we try to take into the service young 
men from 1 8 to 20 years old; they are more teachable, active, 
endure more, and by the time they work up from the bottom, 
where they enter, to the higher positions, they are admirably 
fitted for their duties. Then we keep them during good behavior. 
We have about 40 old men, faithful fellows, who ought to be re- 
placed by young men. They have served a long time and we 
can not turn them out. W^hen our service is improved we shall 
have a pension roll and retire employes when they reach a certain 
age on half pay. For promotions we apply a competitive test, 
examining men in a lower grade as to their knowledge of the 
work at which they are employed, and in the duties of the po- 
sition to which an appointment is to be made. This rule applies 
unvaryingly, and develops the highest standard of fitness and 
capacity. In the superintendencies of stations there have been 
within my term three vacancies occasioned by death, and every 
one has been well filled by a competitive selection from the head 
clerks. In the last case so close was the race between two clerks 
that the person appointed was given the place only by reason of 
a longer term of service than his rival. Our men, too, have to 
keep continually striving for excellence to retain their places. 
They understand that their tenure of office depends on the per- 
formance of their duties. The quarterly examination of assort- 
crs of letters and distributors of papers may show that a man is 
getting slack and careless in his work, and he may have to go 
down a peg and give place to some bright young fellow who is 
working his way up. Rum is the great trouble with those who 
fail to keep their places. More than two-thirds of the removals 
in my term have been for indulgence in drink. It unfits the men 



now CIVIL SERVICE PRINCIPLES ARE APPLIED. 



115 



morally and physically, and in the Post-office service the latter is 
almost as important as the former. Our physical examinations 
of the carriers are as strict as for soldiers in the regular army.' 

The best practical illustration of the consistent application 
of civil service principles in the management of the office, is to be 
found in Mr. James' selections of heads of departments. Henry 
G. Pearson, Assistant Postmaster ; James Gayler, Superintendent 
of City Delivery ; Anthony Yeomans, General Superintendent of 
the Distribution Department ; Charles Forrester, Jr., Superinten- 
dent of the Registered Letter Department, have all been in the 
Post-office service more than twenty years, and together v^^ith 
others holding important positions, have v^^on their places by 
successive promotions from subordinate positions. The present 
superintendents of four branch offices began their work on the 
mails as carriers. 

The civil service examinations in the office are conducted by 
a board consisting of Henry G. Pearson, Assistant Postmaster, 
James Gayler, Superintendent of City Delivery, and Thomas R. 
Bannerman, secretarj- to Postmaster James. They are all strongly 
in sympathy with Postmaster James as to the system of appoint- 
ments and promotions, and not being subject to removal at the 
behest of politicians, they apply the tests of capacity alike to the 
' favorite son ' of the Republican Assembly District and the ap- 
plicant who comes on his merits. One of Postmaster James' 
predecessors removed 300 old employes in a single month to 
make places for the candidates of politicians. Mr. James will 
complete four years of service next month without having made 
a removal for political reasons. 

A simple statement like this is, of itself, a triumph- 
ant answer to some of the most plausible obj'ections, 
that are made to civil service reform by rules and 
regulations. All other objections will ^iv^ way be- 
fore the demonstrations of experience. The com- 
mon sense of the people will cordially respond to the 
common sense embodied in such a system , while their 
moral and patriotic feelings will be no less gratified 



I 16 ^IR- GLADSTOXE OJV CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

with the principles of fair dealing, equal rights, and 
loyalty to duty, by which it is animated. The peo- 
ple are liable to be deceived, and led astray for a 
while, by the fallacies and lies of partisan politics ; 
they sometimes allow themselves to be fearfully im- 
posed upon, even with regard to their own immedi- 
ate and most vital interests ; but they are not quite 
so childish or silly as not to know and appreciate the 
vast difference between a solid system of wise and 
efficient business arrangements, and a system based 
upon the selfish interests and ambition of a few schem- 
ing politicians. Nor ought we to doubt that the bet- 
ter class of our public men will, sooner or later, range 
themselves on the side of this reform. It has been 
so in Great Britain, and why should it not be so with 
us ? As bearing on this point, let me cite the testi- 
mony of the ablest and most illustrious living states- 
man of England. In a speech delivered at Green- 
wich, in October, 187 1, Mr. Gladstone used this im- 
pressive language : 

" It has been our happy lot, in almost every department of the 
State— I believe there are but two exceptions— to give up that 
which has always been considered the special patronage and the 
highly-prized patronage of a government, namely, the appoint- 
ment of clerks to the civil offices of the country. We have 
abandoned that power ; we have thrown every one of them open 
to public competition. The transition is now nearly complete, 
and, with regard to the future, I can say that, as to the clerkships 
in my own office — the office of the Treasury — every one of you 

have just as much power over their disposal as 1 have And 

in order that the public sen'ice might be, indeed, the public 
service ; in order that we might not have among the civil officers 
of the State that which we had complained of in the army, 
namely, that the service was not the jiroperty of the nation, but 
of the officers, we have now been enabled to remove the barriers 



REFORM THE PEOPLE'S WORK. 



117 



of nomination, patronage, jobbing, favoritism in whatever form ; 
and every man belonging to the people of England, if he so 
pleases to fit his children for the position of competing for places 
in the pubHc service, may do it entirely irrespective of the ques- 
tion, what is his condition in life, or the amount of means with 
which he may happen to be or not to be blessed." 

Shall American statesmen be behind those of En- 
gland in helping on a movement so entirely in the in- 
terest of the country and of republican equality ? But, 
after all, this reform, as I have said already, is pre- 
eminently the people's cause, and to them it must 
look for its ultimate triumph. Without their intelli- 
gent and steadfast support, it is sure to fail. And the 
people will never give it such support ; they will 
never insist upon a pure and righteous system of 
Government patronage until, in their own appoint- 
ments to office, they learn to set the example and 
practise themselves what they demand of their public 
servants. The stream does not rise higher than its 
source. The spoils system is not solely the work of 
selfish politicians; it is also the bitter fruit of that 
criminal neglect — or that careless, unthinking, partisan 
performance — of civil duty, which is so common and cry- 
ing an evil among us. How quickly could the people 
purify their government, if they would stop electing 
so many incompetent and corrupt men to take part 
in administering it ! There are, no doubt, exceptions 
to the rule ; but in the long run, and as a general fact, 
the executive and legislative departments of the gov- 
ernment will fairly represent the dominant temper 
and habits of the people themselves. It is of infinite 
moment, therefore, that the people should be deeply 
sensible of their real responsibility in the choice of the 
national rulers and law-givers. They should feel it to 



I l8 ffOW THE PEOPLE SHOULD APPOLNT TO OFFICE. 

be, what indeed it is, the most solemn act and ordi- 
nance — the very sacrament, as it were — of republican 
self-government. All the blessings of our American 
constitutional liberty depend upon its wise and right- 
ful exercise. By its wrongful, perverse exercise we 
may easily bring upon ourselves and our posterity 
some of the worst and most debasing evils that can 
afflict human society. Let me at once fortify and en- 
force this remark by citing, in conclusion, a passage 
from Edmund Burke, who, on at least some most vital 
points of political wisdom, is surpassed in moral 
depth and power by no other man that ever spoke 
our mother-tongue : 

Wheft the people have emptied themselves of all the 
hist of selfish will, zvhich without religion it is impos- 
sible they ever should, when they are conscious that they 
exercise, and exercise, perJiaps, in a higher link of the 
order of delegation, the poiver, which to be legitimate 
must be according to that eter?ial, inimtitablc lazu, in 
which ivill and reason are the same, they will be more 
careful hoiv they place power in base and incapable 
hands. I ft their nominatiofi to office, they will not ap- 
point to the exercise of authority, as to a pitiful job, 
but as to a holy fu7iction ; 7ioi according to their sordid, 
selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their 
arbitrary zvill ; but they will confer that poiver (which 
any man may well tremble to give or receive) on those 
only, in zvhom they may discern that predominant pro- 
portion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together 
and fitted to the charge, such as in the great and inri'it- 
able mixed mass of human imperfections and infirm- 
ities, is to be found. 

I SPEAK AS TO WISE MICN ; llIxiK W. WliAl 1 .s.W . 



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